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AFD Group’s 2020 Results: a Rapid Response to the Crisis while Maintaining the Long-term Focus
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Despite an unprecedented worldwide pandemic, AFD Group’s commitments over the past year haven’t faltered. CEO Rémy Rioux presented the Group’s results for 2020 on Tuesday, April 13. Even amidst the devastating Covid-19 health crisis, commitments last year surpassed €12 billion. And the Group has fast-tracked procedures to meet the urgent health and social needs of its clients, increasing disbursements by more than 35% compared to 2019, and reaching a record of nearly €9 billion.
AFD is contributing to France’s financial determination to raise Official Development Assistance (ODA) to 0.55% of our gross national income (GNI).
However urgent a short-term response was to helping countries deal with the damage done by the Covid crisis, it remains in line with the long-term goals of transforming our economies and societies and ensuring trajectories that are humane, green and sustainable.
To help guide toward this essential goal, in 2020 AFD Group organized the Finance in Common Summit (FiCS), which brought together the world’s public development banks. This is also in anticipation of COP26 this coming November 2021. AFD also reinforced its research and innovation capacities by hosting the Fund for Innovation in Development (FID) chaired by Esther Duflo.
AFD has striven to improve the evaluation of its projects in the field, as requested by the French National Assembly and AFD’s supervisory ministers Jean-Yves Le Drian, Bruno Le Maire, and Sébastien Lecornu.
AFD GROUP KEY FIGURES IN 2020
- €12.1 billion in new commitments
- €8.8 billion in disbursements (+35% compared to 2019)
- 996 new development projects in all sectors combined
- €3 billion in Covid-19 response, including €1.2 billion for the “Health in Common” initiative in Africa and the Middle East, along with French stakeholders
- €5.4 billion for the climate, to help meet the €5 billion climate finance commitment made at COP21 in 2015
- €4.9 billion for Africa, representing 46% of AFD’s total commitments, including €511 million for the G5 Sahel countries
- €565 million in financing for biodiversity
- Our subsidiary Proparco, with commitments of €2 billion in 2020, has become a leading European private-sector financing institution
- The Finance in Common Summit last November brought together—at the invitation of AFD and IDFC—the world’s 450 public development banks, to which AFD provided €1.7 billion of financing in 2020
- In 2020, AFD Group achieved a net income of €40 million, demonstrating the strength of its economic model