AFD_REGISTRATION_DOCUMENT_2017

2

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Information on commitments to promote sustainable development

2.3.2.2 Partnership or sponsorship initiatives In 2017bas part of a participative approach, AFD Group renewed its partnership strategy with civil society organisations, a commitment over the 2018-2023 period. This strategy is in accordance with the French government’s priorities which aim to strengthen partnerships with civil society organisations and to increase the share of official development assistance passing through them in accordance with a growing trend in official development assistance. In 2017, the budget dedicated by AFD to NGO initiatives amounted to €76M, including €5M deferred until the 2018bfinancial year. AFD thereby participated in the financing of 117bprojects and two studies introduced by 88 French civil society organisations (CSO). The total budget dedicated to NGO initiatives increased by 80%, from €42M to €76M, between 2012band 2017. In parallel, significant dialogue, carried out to the satisfaction of all the stakeholders, resulted in the adoption of measures such as the improvement in the transparency and accountability between AFD and the OSC and the significant reduction in the procedures for examination and monitoring, whilst preserving the quality and exhaustive nature of the data. This dialogue also led to the preparation of a new cross-cutting intervention framework for relations between AFD and the civil society organisations (CIF-CSO) for the 2018-2023 period; it will shortly be approved by the Board of Directors. In addition, in 2017, AFD entered into or renewed 59bpartnerships for an amount of €3.3M. These included partnerships with associations, international institutions, research institutes and regional collectivities. They cover the full spectrum of AFD’s operations and develop relationships with French and international partners that can help AFD fulfil its mandate. 2.3.2.3 Transparency To build a relationship of trust and high-quality dialogue with these external stakeholders, AFD is committed to enhancing transparency in its activities. The meeting of the Inter-ministerial Committee for International Cooperation and Development (CICID) of 30b November 2016balso reiterated the commitment (pillar V) “to improve the transparency and accountability of French aid” in particular by asking AFD to: (i) lead France’s membership of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI); (ii) host on a common website (https://opendata.afd.fr/page/accueil/) the monitoring data and information for the French State’s bilateral aid projects and that of its principal operators, including the Agency, in accordance with IATI standards. To comply with the CICID’s request, AFD joined the IATI on behalf of France in 2017. This membership should help it better comply with the IATI standard and ultimately improve the quality of the data it publishes. AFD is continuing its policy to publish business data in the IATI format on its own open data website, http://afd. opendatasoft.com/. The project data published to date cover

69% of sovereign projects of an amount greater than €100K in progress financed over all the areas in which AFD operates. In addition, AFD continues to publish as much documentation as possible each year to help the public understand its strategies, its activities and operations, including its activity data for the previous five years. Since 2013, it has provided consolidated (albeit not exhaustive) reports of the actual results of its development actions through ex post aggregated performance indicators taken from a list validated by the Inter-ministerial Committee for International Cooperation and Development (CICID) on 31bJuly 2013. These indicators were included and supplemented in the July 2014 Act on guidance and planning related to development and international solidarity policy. In addition, under the Partnership for Open Government action plan, France has published a new national action plan for the 2017-2019 period targeting improved transparency in the public services. The significant feature of this action plan is AFD’s commitment to expand the scope of its online activities, particularly in the non-sovereign sector. AFD Group has started to revise its transparency and stakeholder dialogue policy to take account of the best international practices and the expectations of its stakeholders. This new policy will be adopted in the first half of 2018. 2.3.3 Subcontractors and suppliers 2.3.3.1 Consideration of social and environmental issues in our purchasing policy Note: The scope for indicators used throughout this section is AFD head office. Purchasing and subcontracting in local offices and Proparco are not taken into account. AFD is aware of the difficulties ESATs (vocational rehabilitation centres) and EAs (sheltered workshops) may encounter accessing its markets. With this in mind, the Purchasing and Public Procurement Division has taken steps to mitigate the situation and is making every effort to award the contracts under its responsibility which are suitable for the protected sector to pre-approved partners. With an extended remit, the division will be able to work upstream to identify markets which will be open only to the protected sector. Moreover, the “Solidarity Procurement” action, linking micro- finance and purchasing (a part of the savings achieved by AFD thanks to its purchases is paid over to micro-entrepreneurs in the countries in which AFD operates in the form of micro-credit) was pursued in 2017, resulting in €263,450 of financing spread over 390bprojects in 11bcountries. This project is presented on the website www.achatsafdmicrofinance.fr.

45

REGISTRATION DOCUMENT 2017

www.afd.fr

Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online