With world leaders and development experts gathered this week for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, or FfD4, in Sevilla, Spain, the stakes could not be higher. The Sustainable Development Goals remain a distant horizon for the world, and the gap between ambition and action persists. Yet, amid these challenges, European Development Finance Institutions, or EDFI, stand out as vital bridges — spanning divides between public and private sectors, European capital and local innovation, and policy intent and on-the-ground impact.
In the development finance world, bridging capital and impact is not for the faint of heart. It’s arduous work to channel investment into impactful business models across low- and middle-income countries. The consolidated portfolio of European DFIs in emerging markets and developing economies, or EMDE, grew by about 6% annually between 2016 and 2024, reaching over €60 billion in 2024. Their unique position links the risk appetite, financial power, and know-how of the private sector with the development objectives and safeguards of public institutions, making them indispensable in the quest to achieve the SDGs.
However, the promise of “billions to trillions” — aka an acceleration of private finance mobilization — made in Addis Ababa at the previous Financing for Development conference a decade ago has not materialized. Mobilization of finance for sustainable development proves to be hard in an increasingly complex geopolitical, financial, and regulatory landscape.
About the author
David Kuijper
David Kuijper has been the CEO of the Association of European Development Finance Institutions, or EDFI, since September 2023. Previously, he served as the manager of public investment and blended finance at FMO, the Dutch development bank. Prior to that, he worked at the World Bank Group as an adviser on trust fund reform and financing for development. He joined the Netherlands Foreign Service in 1998, where he held various positions. He is an alumnus of the Free University Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and University College Dublin, Ireland.
