Western and Central Africa
At year’s end IFAD was supporting 47 ongoing programmes and projects in 21 countries in the region.

IFAD-funded programmes and projects:

• created more than 5,000 jobs in Burkina Faso.
• introduced new cassava and yam varieties in Côte d’Ivoire which significantly increased production:  cassava yields increased from 15 to 26 tonnes per hectare and yam yields more than doubled.
• secured an additional month of food during the hungry season for 50,000 households in Niger through funded grain storage facilities.

Eastern and Southern Africa
A total of 48 programmes and projects supported by IFAD were ongoing in 16 countries in the region during the year.

IFAD-funded programmes and projects:

• in the southern part of Madagascar introduced new production technologies, expanded rural road networks and strengthened local people’s knowledge and skills resulting in increased rural incomes by an average of 78 per cent.
• improved crop production practices in Uganda; as a result about 400,000 people had surplus produce to take to market.
• enabled the Rural Knowledge Network Pilot Project for East Africa to support companies which provide locally-relevant market information and facilitate trading in agriculture, horticulture and livestock markets.

Asia and the Pacific
At the end of 2009, a total of 56 ongoing programmes and projects were supported by IFAD in 17 countries in the region.

IFAD-funded programmes and projects:

• trained nearly 2,000 farmers in Tuyen Quang Province in Viet Nam, resulting in increased herd size.
• eveloped financial services for households at the community level in IFAD’s first-ever programme devoted entirely to Afghanistan.

Latin America and the Pacific
A total of 31 programmes and projects supported by IFAD were ongoing in 18 countries in the region during the year.

IFAD-funded programmes and projects:

• worked with some 400 peasant communities and irrigation organizations in Peru to develop plans for natural resource management.
• increased harvests in Nicaragua, the result of improved methods of production and additional support from the government.
• enabled indigenous communities in Northeast Argentina to see marked improvements in food security, with a 73 per cent increase in food crop production.

Near East and North Africa, Central and Eastern Europe and Newly Independent States
At year’s end, a total of 38 programmes and projects supported by IFAD were ongoing in 16 countries and territories in the region.

IFAD-funded programmes and projects:

• supported a livestock and rural finance project in Bosnia and Herzegovina that set up and strengthened more than 20 producers’ associations and one producers’ cooperative, with a total of 3,400 members – 39 per cent of whom were women.
• worked in desert land between the Suez Canal and the Nile Delta in Egypt, enabling about 24,000 families to settle in the area. The IFAD-funded project, which provided access to piped drinking water, good quality irrigation water and sewage disposal, also provided opportunities for education and training and access to agricultural equipment.
• continued to give priority to forging long-term partnerships with the OPEC Fund for International Development, the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, and the Islamic Development Bank.