As part of the 8th annual Franco-Haitian Friendship Thursdays, the Haitian Embassy in France welcomed Matthieu Discour, Director of the Three Oceans Department at the French Development Agency (AFD), as its guest of honor.

As part of the 8th annual Franco-Haitian Friendship Thursdays, the Haitian Embassy in France welcomed Matthieu Discour, Director of the Three Oceans Department at the French Development Agency (AFD), as its guest of honor. He met with staff and other guests to discuss the AFD's work in Haiti, which spans the areas of governance, education, health, agriculture, and disaster risk management.

This meeting, marked by the quality of the presentations and the richness of the discussions, provided an opportunity to address in depth several key themes related to the AFD Group's work in Haiti over the past 50 years. Discussions focused in particular on the three priority areas of intervention : strengthening the resilience of populations and territories; maintaining the institutional capacities essential to the rule of law and access to basic services; and adapting intervention methods to the specific contexts of project implementation.

In his remarks, the Haitian Ambassador to France, Louino Volcy, emphasized that Haiti intends to shift from a practice of aid to one of investment in order to break free from the structural dependency that aid tends to perpetuate. In Haiti, the aid needed "is a sustainable and solidarity-based investment that helps us become self-reliant." Today, what we need is funding for major infrastructure projects, such as the AFD's support for the construction of the road linking Hinche to Saint-Raphaël.

Particular attention was paid to partnership mechanisms, project submission and review procedures, the role of AFD's local agencies, and the complementary actions of the Embassy, ​​French institutions, and Haitian partners. The discussions also highlighted several flagship projects implemented with the support of Expertise France, concretely illustrating the impact of Franco-Haitian cooperation on the ground.

IH/ iciHaiti