Devex: Exclusive: France to launch development innovation fund chaired by Esther Duflo
“France will start a Fund for Innovation in Development next year to test and scale up solutions to poverty and inequality, a move its founders hope will ‘transform’ the country’s approach to aid. The Fonds d’Innovation pour le Développement, or FID, chaired by MIT economist and Nobel laureate Esther Duflo, will be an independent body hosted by the French Development Agency in Paris. For its first year, the French ministries of finance and foreign affairs will contribute a combined €15 million ($18.3 million), though French Member of Parliament Hervé Berville told Devex that the annual amount will likely increase…” (Chadwick, 12/17).

An interview with the fund’s chair, Esther Duflo, also is available from Devex.