Sarah Knafo, French MEP and Vice-President of Éric Zemmour’s hard-right party Reconquête!, has accused the French Development Agency (AFD) of squandering taxpayers’ money for what she called questionable goals.
On February 17, she gave conservative French TV news channel CNews an overview of what she claimed was “wasteful” spending.
Knafo, herself a former civil servant, gave a list of financed projects she thought were not the best governmental use of funds.
France, for example, gave enormous amounts of money to China, “the world’s economic leading power”, she said.
One beneficial loan was given for the ecological restoration of the Pingnan district in China, to “improve the ecological environment and the living environment of the inhabitants of Pingnan district by bringing nature and biodiversity back to the city”, Knafo said.
In that arrangement, France will pay €40 million annually until 2042.
A second loan, of €65 million, was given to protect the “source of the Qianjiang River and the sustainable urban development of Kaihua”, she said, in order to create “a synergy between Qianjianyuan National Park and Kaihua City, based on environmental excellence”.
This loan also will run until 2042, both projects were launched in 2022.
Moving away from China, France is also paying to “institutionalise and scale-up gender-responsive budgeting in Jordan” for €151 million from 2022 to 2025, Knafo revealed.
She did, though, admit she did not understand what that actually meant but added few people probably did.
One programme was to “strengthen gender equality in access to economic opportunities in Albania”, costing €51 million between 2021 and 2033, she said.
Another €44 million went to “water and food security in Gaza” while €151 million was given to “institutionalise and scale up gender-responsive budgeting in Jordan”.
The AFD also gave €27,869 to a programme about “The circus as a vector of the future for the youth of South Africa”.
In Gaza, the aid agency provided €44 million for water and food security, granted in 2018 and committed until 2025.
“I don’t know who can promise us at the French Development Agency that this money is not intercepted by Hamas,” Knafo told CNews.
A final example involved funding for biodiversity protection in Algeria, in the M’zab Valley, despite the country’s highly strained relationship with France.
This project came to €600,000 over three years.
Vous voulez savoir comment votre argent sert à aider Gaza, la Chine, l’Albanie, la Jordanie, l’Afrique du Sud ?
Écoutez. ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/KRHeWl2liH
— Sarah Knafo (@knafo_sarah) February 17, 2025
Knafo said the French Government gave this money away while French farmers struggled to survive and schools had to close in rural areas in France.
“I find it scandalous,” she said.
“Taking money from the French to waste it like this across the globe is grotesque.”
She urged people to visit the AFD’s website to get a picture of the situation. Shortly after she did so, the site appeared to go offline for a while.
On a more positive note, Knafo concluded that developments in the US were reassuring, citing US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to curb such spending regarding, for example, USAID.
Her interview with CNews was widely watched in France, leading to public outrage.
He said the agency did not spend a single euro of public money but lent it at the market rate.
This happened “in the service of the climate and the protection of our planet, and even recovers interest on these operations”, he claimed.
However, according to the French Court of Auditors, the agency had €50 billion in outstanding loans with a low recovery rate.
In their report, published on April 2024, the auditors warned about a lack of efficiency and unpredictability with budget executions.
The minister continued: “In an increasingly brutal world, we need solidarity, we need protection, we need common projects for a better future. This is the whole meaning of our policy of development aid.”
“Disinformation is detrimental to peaceful public debate,” he concluded.
Replying to this, Knafo told Mohamed-Soilihi had simply used public data and that she had not revealed more than a fraction of what she knew, promising to tell more soon.
“You, on the other hand, really want to lie to the French, because here is the public data: 87.44 per cent of French public development aid is made in the form of donations, not loans,” she responded.
“For the rest, do we find it normal to lend money to China, when we are in debt to the tune of €3,200 billion? You have lost common sense.”
Throwing in another example of what she saw as waste, Knafo pointed out that €8 million went to “improve access to clean cooking energy in the Sahel”.
She challenged Mohamed-Soilihi to explain the interest of the French in that project.
“When I invite citizens to check for themselves how their money is used, you see brutality. I see democracy.”
“All citizens have the right to ascertain ‘the need for public contributions, to consent to them freely, and to monitor their use’. This is Article 14 of our Declaration of Human Rights,” Knafo said.
The agency also responded, stating on X that it was “first and foremost a bank” since 85 per cent of its activities consisted of granting loans.
It went on to claim the agency created serious leverage and that for each euro from the French State, €12 was invested.
“And above all, the AFD is useful for France: By investing in health or even the climate internationally, we are also investing for our fellow citizens; we have mutual interests in cooperating.
“In addition, our financing creates value and employment in France! Because more than 50 per cent of the markets financed by the AFD have been won by French companies. This represents €3 billion of economic benefits for French companies,” the agency stated.
This, it claimed, led to the creation of 40,000 jobs in civil society and growing French expertise.
According to the French Court of Auditors, the agency had €50 billion in outstanding loans with a low recovery rate.
In their report, published on April 2024, the auditors warned about a lack of efficiency and unpredictability with budget executions.
