Since its inception in 1999, PPIAF has collaborated with the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) to identify the role the private sector can play to support governments in developing countries as they seek to modernize, rehabilitate, and build new infrastructure, which is required to provide basic services such as clean water, electricity, roads, ports, airports, and better telecommunications to underserved populations. PPIAF has recognized that the private sector not only brings capital and mobilizes resources for investments in infrastructure, but it also brings cutting edge technologies, management best practices in both the implementation and long-term operation and management of infrastructure, professionalism and leadership, and tools to achieve efficiencies.

Through AFD, France has been one of PPIAF's key partners for over ten years. Their support, which has included financial contributions and the provision of offices in Dakar for several years, has been crucial to the success of PPIAF to provide development assistance to local communities. Read more about AFD and PPIAF's collaboration in AFD-PPIAF : un partenariat fécond pour impulser le secteur privé vers les infrastructures [PDF].

French private investment in developing countries is spread across most regions. This note [PDF] from the Private Participation in Infrastructure Database examines investments by French sponsors from 1990-2010.