Working with Non-Governmental Organizations

• IFAD recognizes the comparative advantages of NGOs in: knowledge of local conditions; close contact with the people; experience in the field; and terms of their innovation and flexibility.
• Most collaboration between NGOs and IFAD is at the project level. This collaboration has taken many forms but is not necessarily mutually exclusive. In the IFAD-supported projects, NGOs may be:

implementing one or more project components;

cofinanciers (in cash or kind);

independent partners that implement activities complementary to the projects supported by the Fund;

consultants.

• Since 1980, 326 NGOs have been involved in IFAD-financed projects and this collaboration is increasing. At present, 138 NGOs work with IFAD in the field of which, 19% are in Asia; 30% in sub-Saharan Africa; 41% in Latin America and the Caribbean; and 10% in the Near East and North Africa.
• In order to enhance interaction between NGOs and IFAD, in 1987 the Fund established a special window to provide direct grant funding to NGOs under the IFAD/NGO Extended Cooperation Programme (ECP). The objective of this programme is to promote pilot initiatives and innovative technologies that can be replicated and upscaled in the context of IFAD investment projects.

• Since 1987, 107 such grants have been extended to NGOs: 37 in the North and 70 in the South (23 for NGOs in Asia; 24 in Africa; 18 in Latin America and the Caribbean; and 5 in the Near East and North Africa).
• Each year, nearly USD 2 million are allocated for the ECP programme.
• Over and above the ECP grants, a large number of qualified NGOs have access to IFAD loans through governments.
• In 1990, IFAD created a forum for policy discussion with NGOs. The IFAD/NGO Annual Consultation is attended by representatives of selected

Northern and Southern NGOs and allows for an exchange of views, each year on a different theme through case studies of both NGO and IFAD projects. Topics discussed in the past have been:

• provision of credit to the rural poor;
• rural people's organizations;
• land degradation and poverty alleviation;
• capacity-building at the local level; and
• local action development for sustainable resource management.