Devex: French aid boss hits out at USAID’s ‘perverse’ self-reliance strategy
“Europe should reject the logic behind the United States’ ‘perverse’ new aid strategy, the head of the French Development Agency, or AFD, has told Devex, arguing that Washington’s focus on countries’ ‘self-reliance’ reflects one of two competing visions on the future of development cooperation. … [F]or Rémy Rioux, director general at AFD, this reflects an outdated model of development. ‘It’s the logic of ‘catching up’: That is, one day these countries will be like the United States and they’ll get by by themselves,’ Rioux told Devex last week in his office in Paris. ‘Today, in the real world, it’s a narrative that bothers me. Because to allocate development finance according to the capacity of a country to overcome (the need) for development finance is a little perverse, in fact. It’s a way of legitimizing a narrative of pulling back’…” (Chadwick, 7/9).