AFD Group Set to Invest Heavily in African Youth

AFD Group will be supporting a number of the actions announced at the New Africa-France Summit.

Sport

• Support for sports academies in Africa to facilitate the professional integration of young people. The financial contribution of €4 million out of a total €20 million will reinforce the current training offer at these academies, create sporting areas for women, structure sustainable economic models, provide sports and educational equipment and raise awareness of social and sustainable development issues. After a pilot phase in four sports academies in Africa, the program will eventually provide support to 30 academies, directly reaching 5,000 young people
• Signing of a partnership agreement with the French team sports federations (basketball, handball and volleyball). The aim of this agreement is to expand the actions of the federations internationally, to advance a common portfolio of development through sport projects in Africa and to promote sport as a vehicle for education, better health, social cohesion and empowerment of girls and women. 

Private sector and innovation

• €130 million to support African start-ups.
  
  To meet the needs of entrepreneurs, particularly at the seed funding stage, the Choose Africa initiative run by Proparco, an AFD Group subsidiary focused on the private sector, will now be offering African start-ups financing and support tailored to the early stages of their business development. In total, €130 million will be deployed between now and 2025 to help African digital start-ups as a result of the merger between Digital Africa and Proparco. Since 2018, €2.5 billion has been committed to support 26,000 businesses.

For more information, see the press release

• Launch of a new community of entrepreneurs to create a network of African SMEs and VSEs. This initiative will facilitate an exchange between private actors in Africa, connect them with international investors, and strengthen links between African actors and the French business ecosystem.

Cultural and Creative Industries

• Aid for cultural and creative industries (CCIs) with €5 million to be invested in two flagship programs that are already supporting leaders of cultural projects on the continent.
• First, Accès Culture is a program to finance cultural micro-projects with a strong social impact, run by pairs of Franco-African associations in partnership with the Institut Français.
• Second, Afrique Créative, is a business incubation program for entrepreneurs in the cultural and creative industries aiming to develop their business model, structure their company and raise private funding. With nearly 70 winners supported in the past two years as part of these two programs, this new financing will give a boost to more projects and help identify community project leaders with activities that could be economically profitable.