Shaping tomorrow, today. Enabel publishes Activity Report 2024-2025
International cooperation is under severe pressure. And paradoxically, in today's global context, the need for international cooperation has never been greater. For Enabel, this is reason enough to resist and reinvent itself. Because international cooperation is essential for dialogue, stability and peace. Enabel plays a crucial role as an instrument of the foreign and security policy of Belgium and Europe.
"Belgian international cooperation is an essential tool of our foreign policy," said Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Minister Maxime Prévot. "Enabel, our Belgian Agency for International Cooperation, plays a crucial role in this. Thanks to their accumulated expertise, years of presence on the ground and unique approach in supporting governments and institutions, Enabel enjoys wide recognition, both in the countries in which it operates and within the EU. The agency propagates the core values of Belgian international cooperation and is committed to concrete change on a daily basis."
For Enabel’s CEO Jean Van Wetter, geopolitical shifts are determining the future of international cooperation. "The transformation we started four years ago as part of our Act for Impact strategy anticipated the new paradigm to some extent. We diversified our funding sources and we wrote a new narrative for international cooperation that responds to today's challenges. But in a rapidly changing world order, we need to go even further. Therefore, we have also fundamentally revised the type of programmes we implement, taking into account not only socio-economic development issues but also our partners' demand for mutually beneficial relationships."
An example of this transformation is Enabel's active presence in the European Union's Global Gateway initiative. Enabel is a key player in 4 of the 11 strategic corridors between the EU and Africa: Cotonou-Niamey, Abidjan-Lagos, Abidjan-Ouagadougou and Dar es Salaam-Kigoma. The corridors should facilitate trade and mobility in Africa and between Africa and Europe. They should also support investment in sustainable, efficient and secure connections between the continents, developing value chains that benefit the economies in both Africa and Europe.
The new paradigm also calls for more collaboration with the private sector. In 2024, Enabel brought together 60 Belgian entrepreneurs, innovators and financial institutions to brainstorm pioneering solutions for post-conflict reconstruction in Ukraine and Gaza. Those debates led to concrete ideas on sustainable reconstruction and public-private partnerships and new cooperation tools.
The paradigm shift also encourages Enabel to cooperate more with other European players (Finland, Germany, France...). In April 2025, Enabel, together with Swedish agency SIDA, assumed the presidency of the European Practitioners’ Network, with the ambitious agenda of further strengthening the European Union's impact on the international stage.
The 2024-2025 Activity Report covers a variety of themes, such as the reconstruction of Ukraine and Gaza, the importance of staying engaged in fragile environments like the Sahel, the important role of science in serving the climate, labour mobility and entrepreneurship, and the necessary cooperation with the private sector.
The report further includes interviews with Joseph Nganga, special envoy of Mission 300, on long-term (climate) finance and how it can unlock Africa's potential in energy, infrastructure and green industrialisation. Francesca Di Mauro, European Union ambassador to Côte d'Ivoire, underlines the importance of partnerships between the EU, its member states and Enabel. And Gargee Ghosh, head of Global Policy & Advocacy at the Gates Foundation, explains how our collaboration strengthens health systems and promotes innovative solutions.
The Activity Report is available in Dutch, French and English, in electronic form or pdf, at https://stories.enabel.be/activity-report-2024-2025/