Before joining Expertise France, you worked for fifteen years within the French Development Agency (AFD). What is less known is that you have considerable expertise in water and sanitation…

I previously held the position of Deputy Director of the Sustainable Development Solution Executive Directorate at AFD headquarters. Before that, I was deputy director of the Rabat agency in Morocco, which is the largest among AFD’s country locations. I was also responsible for the water and sanitation division worldwide.

So I originally come from the water and sanitation sector. I have worked a lot on strengthening essential services in many countries, but also in France for the Suez group. I supported the large public-private partnerships that were put in place and I was even, at one time, responsible for water distribution in the Hauts de Seine department.

Before that, I worked in the same sector but on the subjects of WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) and resources in Sahel countries with NGOs such as GRET
or the Solidarité eau program.

An expertise that you will put to the service of your new functions: water and sanitation issues are among the continent’s major challenges…

Water is a resource, which must of course be preserved, but it is also a very social and political subject. We observe it through local communities in Africa, but also in the private sector. This is why I moved towards the private sector at one point, because it met a demand and allowed a move to scale. The reason why I then went through AFD is that I felt the need to strengthen the institutional frameworks in the countries and then to strengthen the institutions themselves.

Your arrival at the head of Expertise France coincides with the new 2023-2027 strategic plan. What direction do you intend to give to the Agency, knowing that 65% of the volume of activity is linked to Africa?

Among the main lines, there is the objective of being more and more present on the ground, close and in contact with our partners in the countries of interv
ention but also with all the actors of civil society, institutions, communities and then the private sector. We are also engaged in a major action to deconcentrate activities in countries where we are starting to have a significant project portfolio. We are in the process of creating country directorates in Comoros, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Tunisia, this is one of the deployment and implementation priorities for next year.

The agency places its action in particular among the priorities of the Presidential Development Council. As such, I can mention some of them. Obviously in Africa there is the question of adaptation to climate change in general combined with the preservation of vital carbon reserves, that is to say forests and oceans. These two priorities are found in the Gulf of Guinea but also in the Congo Basin.

Expertise France is also committed, like the other subsidiaries of the AFD group, to further integrating civil societies into its programs. Using what approach?

Working with civil society remain
s of course our great trademark, and sometimes in a European format through a ‘Europe team’ since we work a lot with Enabel (Editor’s note: the Belgian development agency) and GIZ (Editor’s note : the German Cooperation Agency) which have joint approaches on European financing to support entrepreneurship and innovation or to enable the development of the private sector and infrastructure which is also a priority of the Presidential Development Council.

It is also about investing in youth and education. We are very present with training centers, we have supported 186 centers in total, including a large proportion in Africa. We also invest a lot in health. We have supported 1979 structures but it still needs to be strengthened. Furthermore, for me, one of the main priorities is the promotion of women’s rights and gender equality which is a transversal dimension of our projects and which contributes, as you know, to the feminist diplomacy put in place by France.

Relations between certain African states and Fra
nce have become strained, reflected by the latest events occurring in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger… How, in this context, can we continue Expertise France’s actions in the region?

We are a French cooperation operator and we always intervene, and this is really our mandate and our mission, at the request of the partners. We will never impose ourselves. This is truly anchored in Expertise France’s policy. Our agency is quite young, we have many very committed young colleagues who greatly mobilize local expertise and regional exchanges. We always intervene in response to requests. Obviously if we are asked to no longer intervene, we no longer intervene. However, we see that there is strong demand in Africa alongside States. We are positioning ourselves more via the European format. These are therefore sharing of experiences, but each State ultimately remains sovereign, each will choose its development trajectory. We also work with the diaspora through our Meet Africa program, on strengthening entrepreneurial cap
acity. We financed 170 entrepreneurs, and provided technical support to 140.

We still have real demands both in French-speaking Africa but also in support of other actors. We also have projects around sport, particularly in North Africa. It’s a way of changing the way we intervene, of writing a new story. I am thinking in particular of the Basketball Experience program, where we work with the NBA to support and inspire sports associations, particularly in Morocco but also in Kenya and Senegal. It is thus a way of promoting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through sport which is, among other things, closely linked to health issues. In Africa the population is very young, sport therefore carries values that we seek to support.

You also support the development of digital on the continent. Using what approach?

Indeed, one of our priorities is supporting digital entrepreneurship. This allows the mobilization of all these digital subjects. This theme also affects institutions: we mobilize governments in
their management in order to guarantee a better transparency process. The PAGOF program (support program for French-speaking open governments) is a good example, contributing to the openness and accountability of the governments of Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Morocco and Tunisia.

To conclude, your roadmap for the start of your mandate and the months to come?

I am going to Tunisia soon for the launch of a project that I find very interesting, ‘Savoir Eco’. This involves promoting dialogue around economic issues where, among other things, Tunisian research and knowledge institutions are financed. We also strengthen civil society by giving it the means to participate in debates between academies and think tanks around economic issues. I find that this illustrates our position: both of exchange but also of catalyst for a dialogue which will be only local. We will continue to support those involved in knowledge production in Africa. This is an approach that must be supported. It is therefore ultimately the universit
ies, the African thinkers, who will inspire their state and their politics.

Source: Africa News Agency