CEFEB
All of the operations carried out by the AFD involve close collaboration between three categories of people and organizations working to maximize the impacts of the projects financed by the Agency: the AFD group’s clients, who are at the heart of the implementation of operations, its partners (in the South and the North) who, without necessarily benefiting directly from the group’s aid, nevertheless contribute to the success of the projects (for example, scientific and technical resource centres or co-funding partners), and finally the group’s employees.
The converging action of these three categories is a key factor in the success of projects. In order to implement short, medium and long-term actions that reinforce operating capacity thereby benefiting all of these categories, the CEFEB, a research centre based in Marseilles since 1995, operates a Corporate University for this “extended family” of the AFD group, providing training in the Agency’s main areas of activity.
The CEFEB is thus a centre for the transmission of skills and expertise and exchanges on evolving issues relating to the main subjects in the public assistance of operational development and research-action on these same subjects and issues where the AFD has strong added value (private-public partnerships, financial innovation for development, the implementation of infrastructure projects through local authorities, etc.) compared to other institutions. It is these subjects, that the AFD’s strategy chooses to promote in the international development environment, that the CEFEB, as the group’s Corporate University, implements for the three sectors contributing to the AFD’s projects. The CEFEB’s role is thus to transfer skills applicable in the various long-term development activities that are located on the frontier between research-action and the operational practices and techniques that have been tested by the AFD in the field.