Afdi is an organisation of French farmers involved in farmers' livehood enhancement in developing countries.

Afdi was created by the main French farmers' organizations in the 70' as a charity in favor of the victims of the starving situation in Sahel in those times. From a purely humanitarian spirit, Afdi reoriented its action towards partnerships with farmers in developing countries to support them building their own organisations.

The mission of Afdi is to strengthen farmers and rural member organisations in developing countries, by promoting an enabling environment for their strategic role and by direct support on the following 3 issues: 
·         To provide better services to members, and particularly to resource poor farmers 
·         To play a significant role in civil society, to defend the interests of farmers and rural members 
·         To develop activities in support of their members (technical, economic...). 
 
The French agricultural professional people involvement is the basis of Afdi's action. It stands in the participation of members of the main French farmers' organizations in Afdi's board at national and regional levels. Members of the same farmers' organizations are also volunteers and, are thus  involved in partnerships with organizations in developing countries as well as in the local life of Afdi' structures.

Besides the actions with the partners, Afdi participate in the awareness rising of rural people in France to rural development problematic in developing countries. Afdi's network is made of 6 000 volunteers in France. The volunteers are farmers, union leaders, technicians, managers in cooperative organizations... Afdi deals with partnerships in 15 countries, through 60 projects. These people are convinced that, in the current global context, it is of essence to take into account the specifics of agriculture in order to fight hunger and poverty. This is only possible if farmers in developing countries get organized to lever in the negotiations with their authorities and that their interest are taken into consideration in international negotiations such as WTO.

Afdi is a member of AgriCord is a network of "agri-agencies", non-governmental organisations for development cooperation with structural links to - and in most cases created by - the farmers' and rural members' organisations in their home countries, including the organisations of rural women, young agrarians, cooperatives and agri-businesses. AgriCord has members in Canada, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Finland, Italy and Sweden.

More information on www.agricord.org