DEVELOPMENT

1 Executive summary
the shift towards more participatory modes of governance, coupled with the fact that
power and decision-making centers are fragmented among a large number of actors could
lead to substantial reforms. For example, AFD’s governance might well open up to include
a broader-based panel of actors. The Agency’s professional competencies could evolve
to integrate increasingly multidisciplinary approaches. These would be necessary in order
to support the complex socio-economic phenomena that promote more sustainable
development paths, and would stretch beyond today’s prevailing engineering sciences
and economic disciplines.
Foresighting for Development
Development agencies, steering through future worlds. Afd2025
I
Yet, in the face of these multiple and uncertain futures, AFD still has some margin of
maneuver. It has the means to act in order to bolster its sustainability, resilience, but also
relevance, and to tailor these to changing contexts. This requires that the Agency show
itself to be open and proactive vis-à-vis activities, partnerships and work methods that
are not currently embedded in its core practices, but which capitalize on other strategies
and ways of thinking and working. AFD would then be well positioned to anticipate
changes and take action for futures that are chosen rather than imposed (cf. “Meta-AFD”
shown at the bottom of the figure below).
The long history of AFD has shown the Agency’s ability to adapt and transform, despite
the many unanticipated developments of the past. AFD in 2015 has very little in common
with the Caisse Centrale de la France Libre of 1941. Thanks to its constantly upheld
values of resistance both in the face of yesterday’s occupying forces and the poverty,
crises and disorders of today’s globalized world, AFD has always managed to make the
necessary changes.
These values of resistance, coupled with openness (to others, to elsewhere, to the long
term), with the ability to take a step back and question, combined with a relentless
forward-looking attitude that is ever watchful of possible futures, seem to be decisive. All
of these are assets that can make AFD resilient and flexible in the face of undesirable
changes and proactive to desirable ones, in support of sustainable futures around the
world.
08