International donors’ renewed interest in agriculture after a long period of neglect is on the tips of everyone’s tongues. The ‘historic’ World Bank report published in 2008 on this subject, followed by the food crisis and pledges of African States and their partners to invest massively in this sector are illustrations of this doctrine shift when it comes to the allocation of national and international public funds. But what is happening today? What form has the ‘rebirth’ of agricultural aid from the OECD’s Development Aid Committee (DAC) to ECOWAS countries taken? Is it effective? What donors are once again mobilising for agriculture? What approaches are they taking? What debates have been launched by this new agenda? While we will not pretend to cover such a complex question exhaustively, we would like to provide our readers with a few signposts and orders of magnitude to better decipher the world of official development assistance (ODA) for agriculture in West Africa and how it is evolving. This brief is part of a broader cycle of reflection undertaken by Inter-Réseaux on agricultural financing, comprising other publications on complementary topics and including a forthcoming issue of Grain de Sel.
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