ABSTRACT: Despite many years of financial system reforms aimed at improving its ability to finance the economy, the financial development in developing countries still remains critical and below expectations. These reforms seem to have led to the people’s exclusion from the financial system. To address this financial exclusion, WAEMU countries have embarked on a process of promoting financial inclusion with strong support from aid providers. This article analyzes the relationship between external aid and financial inclusion. The main idea of the paper is to assess the capacity of foreign aid to promote financial inclusion in WAEMU countries. For that, it focuses on analyzing the relationship between external aid and financial inclusion on one hand et the factors that explain this relationship on the other hand. Using different components of aid, the results show that only aid flows allocated to the financial sector positively and significantly affect the financial inclusion index. They also show a non-linear relationship explaining by the presence of transmission channels. In this regard, among the governance indicators used, only the quality of public administration management proves to be an effective transmission channel.

KEYWORDS – Aid, Aid allocated to financial sector, Aid allocated to agricultural sector, financial inclusion.