The Sevilla conference: AFD Group as precursor and pathfinder in reshaping global financial architecture for international solidarity

Ten years after the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework, why is the Seville conference considered a pivotal moment for international solidarity?

Rémy Rioux: The Sevilla conference is a key moment, both structurally and contextually. In 2015, the calendar of major international summits should have been reversed: we should have started with climate and the urgency to act, then emphasized that fighting climate change depends on strengthening social cohesion and committing to low-carbon growth. Only after that should we have asked how to finance this ambition, with which tools and what architecture. Because we didn't ask the right questions in the right order, our work remained incomplete. 

Of course, we've been very active and innovative over the past ten years. But now we need a single, ambitious framework of incentives and accountability to finally reconcile climate and development. This is one of the principles behind the 4P agenda promoted by the French President since 2023.

I hope that FfD4 helps stop the ongoing hemorrhage that began with USAID's closure in February. The OECD estimates that Official Development Assistance (ODA) will decrease by $60 billion in 2025 compared to 2024. It's the first time such a drop has occurred outside a major macroeconomic crisis. 

This summit will bring together those who still believe in international solidarity. I'll be there alongside our Minister Delegate for Francophonie and International Partnerships, Thani Mohamed Soilihi, whose commitment and support I appreciate. FfD4 is a chance to regroup, take stock, and move forward. I'm pleased that President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will be attending.

What are AFD Group's objectives, focus areas, and proposals in Seville?

Rémy Rioux : AFD Group is ready to support the President and the government, two years after the 2023 Summit for a New Global Financing Pact at the Palais Brongniart.

I'll be taking part in a side event on the Paris Pact for People and the Planet (4P), which brings together over 70 countries at the highest level. More specifically, AFD Group will present several concrete proposals. In recent years, we've developed technical and financial ideas to help reform the global financial system. For example, leveraging International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to strengthen and scale up the capital of multilateral development banks; reviving the use of contingency clauses in loan agreements – mechanisms that automatically suspend debt payments when a country is hit by a disaster. AFD proposed these clauses 20 years ago in response to commodity price shocks, especially cotton in the Sahel. Today, we want to generalize them to respond to climate events like cyclones. 

We're also working to generate high-quality carbon credits within development projects, which could be purchased by public or private investors, in line with Article 6 of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate.

AFD Group will be well represented in Spain. Proparco will be there to explain how our subsidiary will be able to mobilize one euro of private funding for every euro of public investment starting in 2025. Expertise France will attend alongside peer agencies to highlight project implementation and technical assistance – an essential issue, since Seville is not only about financial volumes but also about operational capacity and implementation.

What concrete impacts and changes do you expect from this summit in the context of rebuilding the global financial system?

Rémy Rioux: I hope the summit will be a moment of consensus and action. One way to achieve this is by placing national public development banks, especially those from the Global South, at the center of the conversation. AFD Group has been working on this for over a decade, through the International Development Finance Club (IDFC), founded in 2011, and the Finance in Common (FiCS) initiative launched in 2020. The first reference book on public development banks will be unveiled in Seville. 

While these institutions were largely absent from the conclusions of the 2015 Addis Ababa summit, the opposite is true in the Seville agreement: they feature prominently. Paragraph 30 details the role of national public development banks (PDBs) as key instruments for mobilizing domestic resources, especially household savings. PDBs are the missing link between public budgets and financial markets. They can significantly improve the quality of investment.

And in paragraph 37 – for the first time in a UN text – PDBs are recognized as a system forming the backbone of the international financial architecture. AFD Group currently works with more than 100 public development banks as clients or co-financing partners. We believe many more could be supported to access capital markets, particularly through guarantees developed by the European Commission and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) of the World Bank Group. 

The goal is not to create new institutions but to build a more decentralized, comprehensive, and respectful system that reaches the "last mile." The strength of a national PDB lies in its local roots. It works with AFD or the World Bank to go further, share methods, partner as equals, and access more affordable financing for its clients.

Lastly, in Seville, my AFD colleagues Thomas Mélonio and Jean-David Naudet and I will publish a new policy paper. After analyzing how climate finance has transformed official development assistance (see Official Development Assistance in the Age of Consequences), and proposing a new framework (see Double Standards in Financing for Development), AFD now advocates for unifying existing benchmarks – ODA, climate finance, Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD) – to make them more coherent. 

Our new study (see Beyond "Dichotomania") questions traditional categories, especially the "developing" vs. "developed" divide, which still strongly shapes international relations but no longer reflects the global economic reality after the emergence of many Southern nations. The world is no longer binary; it's a continuum. In fact, 61 countries – one-third of all nations – are both developed and developing. This ambiguity leads to confusion that must now be addressed. We need to restore clarity to what we're doing. Otherwise, the headwinds we're facing could intensify...