Watch: The changing face of French aid

While the U.K. is cutting its official development assistance, France is scaling up. Paris hit 0.53% of gross national income on ODA in 2020, up from 0.38% in 2016. A new programming bill for development assistance is making its way through the French parliament, which would establish a trajectory towards the fabled 0.7% GNI/ODA target by 2025. In a call for Devex Pro subscribers this week, Mae Kurkjian, acting director & senior advocacy manager at ONE France and Hervé Berville, a French MP and rapporteur on the bill, outlined the main changes. Kurkjian said there is a welcome focus on eradicating extreme poverty, spending on human development, favoring grants rather than loans, and greater bilateral ODA. “Apart from this financial trajectory we want to see clear targets in terms of how we spend the money, where it has the most impact and for that we also need more transparency on the figures,” Kurkjian said. “We had a bill in the past, it had priorities and they were not implemented on the ground because we couldn’t see it in the figures.” The new law, which is expected to come into force this summer, also creates an independent body, modeled on the U.K.’s Independent Commission for Aid Impact — though who gets to sit on the entity is still being thrashed out between the senate and national assembly. “The really good takeaway from ICAI and from what the Nordic countries are also doing is that it needs to be independent,” said Berville, who wrote a 2018 report on reforming French aid at the request of President Emmanuel Macron. That means, “no people from civil society, no people from the government, no people from the legislative body. But they have to be accountable in front of all those people.” Other changes include more money for local civil society organizations, greater focus on stabilization efforts in the grey zone between humanitarian crises and development, and more responsibility on French ambassadors to steer programming. “Especially in the Sahel countries, the development advisor of the ambassador will have a say on the projects financed by [the French Development Agency],” Berville said. “It’s the first time.” Highlights from this conference call include: • The priorities for French aid in the coming years. • The latest on the work of Esther Duflo’s new Development Innovation Fund. • What the new law means for the French Development Agency. • What to watch at France’s May 18 summit on financing African economies. Speakers: • Hervé Berville, Député des Côtes-d'Armor, National Assembly • Maé Kurkjian, acting director & senior advocacy manager, ONE France Moderator: • Vince Chadwick, Brussels correspondent, Devex Have follow-up questions? Send them to webinars@devex.com.