New Year Wishes “2025 is a special year for Expertise France. It marks the beginning of a new decade for the agency.”

Dear Partners,

I have the pleasure of wishing you the very best, on behalf of all the teams of Expertise France, for this new year 2025.  

2025 is a special year for Expertise France. It marks the beginning of a new decade for the agency. We will be celebrating our 10^th anniversary on 12 February at Station F in Paris, then throughout the year in our countries of operation. This event will gather partners and leading figures from around the world to discuss how we need to reinvent ourselves to address the major challenges facing the world today in an increasingly uncertain environment. This reflection will build on a white paper prepared in collaboration with researchers from IRIS, which makes ten proposals for the future of international cooperation.

This anniversary also and especially marks the relationship of trust and friendship we have built with each and every one of you throughout these years. Each project we have carried out together, each challenge we have addressed, and each success we have shared, have strengthened the bonds between us. Beyond the results and impacts of our projects, the uniqueness and strength of the agency lies in its ability to move forward together hand-in-hand.

The wealth of the results for 2024 illustrates what we have been doing for the past decade.

In 2024, we continued to address, together, the major challenges facing the world today: climate and health crises, and international conflicts. These events have made us rethink our activity, so that we can closely meet the needs of our partners and people, especially the most vulnerable.

During this year, our agency remained firmly committed to the climate, the conservation of nature, and the construction of sustainable cities, in support of our international commitments, as we demonstrated at COP16 on Biodiversity in Cali and at the World Urban Forum in Cairo.

Expertise France is an actor committed to Global Health. It continued to step up its action to help strengthen health systems, in particular the training of human resources, and scale up the fight against HIV, malaria and tuberculosis through L’Initiative.

Without mentioning all the 350 projects we are implementing, I would mention the resumption of our activities for education in Sudan through the European EQUIP project, the support to Lebanese civil society in a crisis situation with AFD (Shabake), and our activity to support young women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with the AFD Group project “Pour Elles: Sport & Culture”.  

A French agency, but also resolutely European, we have taken part in new Team Europe Initiatives, thereby contributing to the European Union’s Global Gateway strategy. I would mention, for instance, the Regional Teachers Initiative for Africa, and the Team Europe Initiative “Inclusive Societies” in Latin America.

Expertise France continued to support this European aspect through its presidency of the Practitioners’ Network for a second year, alongside the Austrian Development Agency (ADA). Last November, this network was established as a permanent international association to better meet the needs of Europe and its members.

Expertise France also consolidated its position as the second largest European agency for international technical cooperation by its size, and the strength of its model, with 16% of growth in 2024 compared to 2023. In 2025, we expect our annual business volume to exceed €500 million for the first time. This success reflects the quality of the work of our teams, both at headquarters and in the field. I wish to express my appreciation to them. It also highlights the quality of the partnerships we have developed with all of you. Your commitment by our side is invaluable and I thank you for it.

In 2024, we also innovated, by gathering the international cooperation ecosystem for major events on several occasions. In Paris, on the issue of artificial intelligence, in Marseille, on maritime corridors, in Tunis, to discuss the contribution of diasporas to the development of their countries of origin, and in Rabat, on social protection.

In 2024, we also furthered the transformation of the agency and the acceleration of decentralisation, by opening six new country offices and stepping up the deployment of regional coordinators. More than 70 projects are already managed from the field, enabling us to increase our effectiveness and strengthen our impact. We have also strengthened our synergies in AFD Group, to better meet the needs of our mutual clients.

In addition, the signing of a new Means and Objectives Contract with the State for 2023-2026 underscores Expertise France’s role as a public agency serving the solidarity-based and sustainable investment policy. We will be mobilising technical cooperation for the ten priority policy objectives of the Presidential Council on Development, for the planet, for the fight against inequality, for economic and social development, and for the reinforcement of democratic institutions and citizenship, a key issue at a time when these values are being challenged around the world.

My wish for 2025 and the coming decade is that I may continue to lead Expertise France on the path it has been following since 2015, the path of a strong and accountable agency, supporting its countries of operation and their populations, by your side, and working with increasing effectiveness to build a world in common.

Jérémie Pellet, Chief Executive Officer of Expertise France