FIDAction

Issue number 10 - May 2008

Message from the director of the Western and Central Africa Division

Rural poverty is more complex than ever because of unprecedented challenges related to globalization, conflict, climate change, environmental degradation, high food prices and a host of other factors. In such a context, innovation is recognized as a key factor in reducing poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It is through innovative actions that the international community will be able to find solutions for a sustainable development.

To make a positive and lasting impact on rural poverty, IFAD needs to innovate and to help its partners innovate. The organization defines innovation as a process that adds value or solves a problem in new ways. The goal of IFAD’s innovation strategy is to ensure that innovation is systematically and effectively embedded in every aspect of IFAD’s development processes and practices, both at headquarters and in the field. Fostering innovation also means strengthening IFAD’s capacity to work in partnership with poor rural people and their organizations and with governments and other partners, to test new approaches.

In Western and Central Africa, many innovations have been identified and developed within IFAD programmes and projects. IFAD is organizing an innovation workshop and fair in Ouagadougou from 23 to 27 June 2008, to initiate a reflection on a systematic approach or mechanism for identifying and disseminating innovations in the region. This event will launch a forward-looking process of identification and dissemination of innovations in IFAD-supported programmes and projects.

The workshop and fair will be held periodically to ensure a true exchange of information and to support the replication of innovations within programmes and projects and beyond. The 2008 edition of the workshop and fair is an opportunity for IFAD and its partners, and for programmes and projects and farmers, to promote and further develop innovative processes, technological innovations and promising practices developed by projects and innovators in the region. We want it to be a collective action, open to all the actors of development in Western and Central Africa.

Mohamed Béavogui

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Special feature on the IFAD-supported scouting and sharing innovation initiative in Western and Central Africa


IFAD’s Western and Central Africa Division is launching an initiative to scout and share innovations in Western and Central Africa.
The initiative’s objective is to identify, share and disseminate innovations that can deliver solutions to the problems faced by producers and poor rural people in the region, especially women, young people and members of other vulnerable groups. Its starting point will be the activities and results of the Ségou Farmers’ Innovation Fair organized in Mali in 2004 by IFAD, Inter-Réseaux and the Technical Centre for Rural and Agricultural Cooperation (CTA).


Development actors to meet in Western and Central Africa to foster a culture of innovation


Under the Scouting and Sharing Innovation (SSI) Initiative in Western and Central Africa, initiated in mid-2007, IFAD will hold a regional innovation workshop and fair in collaboration with regional partners from 23 to 27 June 2008 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The event will provide an opportunity for people to share innovations from across the region. It will bring together various actors, from farmers to representatives of the private sector, development agencies and regional institutions from within the region and from outside, to maximize impact.

Parallel to the fair, the workshop aims to:

The SSI initiative is expected to set up a systematic approach or mechanism to identify, harvest and disseminate innovations among IFAD programmes and projects and the wider development community. It is carried out in partnership with a range of development actors and partners, including the West Africa Rural Foundation, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, the Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC)/Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Network of Peasant and Producer Organizations in West Africa (ROPPA), the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and FIDAfrique.

Prior to the Ouagadougou event, Fidafrique, SWAC and IFAD launched an e-conference in October 2007 to present the initiative, prepare the event and discuss expected outcomes. A second round of the e-conference will be ongoing around mid-April and will continue after the event to allow participants to further discuss the outcomes of the workshop and fair and the mechanisms of follow up.

For more information, please contact:
Karim Hussein, Regional economist and coordinator of the SSI initiative, [email protected], or the coordinating unit, e-mail: [email protected]

The full list of and summary notes about innovations to be presented in Ouagadougou are available on the Fidafrique website.

Useful links


Supporting innovation to meet basic social needs in the community and improve agricultural productivity

Since 2003, the Sahel and West Africa Club has been involved in an initiative for agricultural innovation in West Africa. Studies have been carried out in several West African countries to gather and capitalize upon successful examples of such innovation. These studies led to the organization of a regional workshop on the subject in June 2004. The conclusions, experiences and analysis generated by the workshop yielded several lessons.

Reforms made to agricultural services in West Africa could affect the access to agricultural innovations by vulnerable groups who mainly rely on public services. These groups traditionally are a key focus in the process of identifying and propagating innovations, especially among those highly vulnerable groups whose access to innovation depends on the ability to pay for necessary services.
 
The reforms to agricultural extension services have also left an institutional gap that is detrimental to farmers’ access to agricultural innovations. Producers’ organizations and private sector agents do not yet possess the sufficient financial or human resource capacity to bridge this gap by themselves.

The success of an innovation often stems from a comprehensive vision, as was the case, for example, with cotton. Experiences with cotton brought out the importance of synergy, which was ensured through an integrated approach that addressed the basic social needs of the community and sought to improve agricultural productivity and production.

A further example is found in the New Rice for Africa (NERICA), where post-harvest processing technologies have been developed using parts made by local artisans, such as blacksmiths from the Office du Niger cooperative in Mali, which led to major increases in productivity.
 
In the case of the ‘bicycle chickens’ initiative, farmers transported live chickens to towns by bicycle, and this provided a livelihood for close to six million household enterprises in Burkina Faso. Three main factors led to the success of this innovation. First, the approach made full use of local know-how (hen houses were built with local materials and traditional medicines were used to combat fatal diseases in guinea-fowl) and exogenous innovative factors (preventative treatments against avian influenza, therapeutic treatments against internal and external parasites, which were carried out by village volunteers). Second, support provided by the government for training village vaccinators and obtaining vaccines and other medicines proved extremely effective. Third, a large network of traders was formed and was involved in marketing at the national and regional level (operating in Benin, Togo and Senegal).

For more information, please contact:


Innovation through participatory development

  Innovation through participatory development
 

 

Villagers buy produce from an itinerant vendor in Thies, Senegal
IFAD photo by Roberto Faidutti

The West Africa Rural Foundation (WARF) builds innovative partnerships with a range of institutions, particularly with regard to methodological, organizational and institutional matters. The foundation also provides assistance at the community level, with the goal of matching development ambitions with the necessary technical, financial and organizational means.

The participatory development of technology (PDT) process is an example of innovative partnership. The process is structured around the following steps:

The process ensures that communities are fully proficient in using the innovations and that they have real decision-making power at all stages of the process. The foundation plays a catalytic role in helping mobilize the resources and capacity needed by the community to address their problems.

In 1996, FRAO set up a partnership with village communities in the Djibanar valley, in the Casamance region of south Senegal. The aim was to create strategies and methods to reduce salinization and acidification, which degrade soil and upset production systems, and consequently increase food insecurity.

A dozen villages contacted the foundation for assistance in rehabilitating rice fields affected by salinization in this valley located in the Casamance River basin. With the help of grants from the International Development Research Centre and the Ford Foundation, the FRAO embarked on two main initiatives:

The researchers learned how to conduct a participatory diagnostic study with the villages to assess constraints and identify high-priority solutions. The study’s findings pointed to the need to erect anti-salt barrages and experiment with rice varieties adapted to the new conditions.
Once the priorities were established, an experimentation method was devised and implemented, with clearly defined roles for the farmers’ organizations and the researchers and with the FRAO acting as facilitator.
 
The FRAO encouraged the innovation process by supporting interaction between researchers and farmers, training people in participatory methods and helping to mobilize resources. The sustainability of the development activities was borne out by effective monitoring and evaluation and by adoption of the participatory approach by the communities.

Contact

Useful links:

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Stories about innovations

Improving soil productivity through nutrient management

  Improving soil productivity through nutrient management
   

Nutrient management helps farmers use fertilizer on their farms efficiently

In 2003, the International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development (IFDC) started working to develop ‘a la carte’ site-specific fertilizer recommendations and to facilitate their uptake in West Africa. (An ‘à la carte’ recommendation proposes options to farmers that they can adopt according to their purchasing power or the yields they are targeting.) With its partners, IFDC worked with farmers’ groups to jointly introduce a set of innovations including à la carte fertilizer recommendations and a platform approach to technology development and dissemination. The innovations aim at improving soil productivity in sub-Saharan Africa, mainly in Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo and Nigeria.

With regard to the à la carte fertilizer recommendations, development fields and farmers were selected to cover major soil types and management backgrounds (such as use of organic input, soil and water conservation practices, rock phosphate and zero input) and to account for soil conditions and the effect of farmers’ practices in formulating the recommendations. Farmers installed so-called nutrient-omission plots in some parts of their fields. This is a direct method of determining the soil’s nutrient-supplying capacity through small, well-managed plots in farmers’ fields that receive quantities of fertilizer nutrients that are adequate for reaching the target yield, minus one nutrient (for instance, without N, P or K). The yield obtained on these plots is considered an indicator of the soil’s capacity to supply the missing nutrient. The soil’s nutrient-supplying capacity and the yield target are used to estimate fertilizer requirements for the particular farm. The principle of these small zero-N, zero-P and zero-K plots is illustrated in Table 1.

Regular observations by all platform members, including farmers, scientists and extension agents, and input dealers and analysis of the  performance of the plots throughout the cropping period help:

Amessouho, a Togolese farmer taking part in the IFDC initiative, confirmed that when staff from the national extension services came to work with farmers in the villages of Afagnan, Tabligbo, Tsévié and Vogan several years ago, they provided farmers with different kinds of fertilizers for demonstrations. But when they left, the farmers stopped using them because they did not understand the principles behind the practices. “With this process facilitated by IFDC, I now consider myself a soil doctor,” said Théophile Atcchou, president of the Afagnan farmers union. “The soils on my farm have few secrets for me since we got involved in the process of learning, using the omission trials. Now we want to share this knowledge with other farmers so they can diagnose their soils by using this technique and search for the right combination of medicine to heal them.”

The à la carte site-specific recommendations help increase the number of farmers who can efficiently use fertilizer on their farms and tackle the inadequacies of the current pan-territorial fertilizer recommendations that are failing to address farmers’ diversity and the dynamics of farm conditions. Working within a platform promotes information dissemination and improves the accessibility of appropriate input at the right time because of the linkages and interaction between farmers and scientists and/or extension agents and input dealers within the platform. The process contributes to the capacity development of stakeholders, mainly farmers.

 

Table 1:  The principle of O-N, 0-P and 0-K plots

Mini-plots

N

P

K

Plot  0-N, +P, +K

0

+

+

Plot 0-P, +N, +K

+

0

+

Plot 0-K, +N, +P

+

+

0

Plot +N, +P, +K

+

+

+

0- = nutrient is not applied, it is the “missing nutrient”; + = nutrient is sufficiently applied so as not to limit crop growth (the exact amount depends on growth conditions; one may refer to recommendations currently used by extension staff, or to what the best farmer does).

 

For more information, please contact:
Abdoulaye Mando, leader of the Natural Resource Management Programme (NRMP) at IFDC, [email protected]

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Land tenure agreements: a tool to help the landless regain use of the walo areas of Maghama

The walo is a flood-prone area composed of hollows lying along the left bank of the Mauritanian portion of the Senegal River. The land is owned by a small number of large-scale landowners and it is used by villagers on the basis of traditional land tenure arrangements.

The objective of the first phase of the Maghama Improved Flood Recession Farming Project was to increase cereal production by introducing improved crops and building flood management works. In addition, the project initiated a process regulating land tenure. During the second phase, the project made significant advances in tenure reform, allowing the most vulnerable groups in the area to gain access to land. The restructuring of the land tenure system was a three-step process. First there was a survey of the social aspects of land tenure. Second, a land agreement was signed. Third, people who previously had no land entitlement were able to enter into the process under favourable conditions. All of this was achieved in a climate of harmony and social solidarity, making the emergence of any conflict unlikely.

The management team of the Maghama Improved Flood Recession Farming Project – Phase I negotiated with landowners and formulated land reallocation arrangements. The arrangements, in the form of land tenure agreements, were signed by the landowners. The agreements granted landless people the right to use the walo land. Drawing on the traditional ownership practices, the land tenure agreement guarantees sustainable land access. It is based on principles of justice, solidarity and efficiency, equitable access to flood recession lands, and social cohesion. It also promotes resource-sharing and strengthens the spirit of solidarity traditionally present in rural communities.

Abdelahi Amadou is a 55-year-old formerly landless farmer who has benefited from the land tenure agreements. Married and father of nine children, he served as a soldier in the Mauritanian Army in Nouakchott, where the high cost of living made life difficult. His modest income meant that he could not afford to provide decent living conditions for his large family. He decided to return to his home village to work on the land. “My father owned no land and the scarce resources of the walo and the limited availability of cultivable land meant that, before the project, I could not obtain sustained access to a big enough patch of land,” he explained.

For Amadou, rehabilitation of the waloland was a stroke of good fortune because it meant that he could cultivate previously unused flood recession lands. Also thanks to the project’s initiatives, he was able to obtain a seven-year renewable agricultural loan. During the last cropping season, he cultivated a four-hectare plot of land and harvested 14 cartloads of sorghum.

The procès verbal d’insertion (PVI) is the instrument that ensures application of the land tenure agreements. The PVI is a negotiated and consensus-based document in which the landowner records his agreement to lease a plot of land to a farmer for a definite or indefinite length of time. The minimum term of the lease agreement is seven years, and the lease is renewable. The PVI was the result of participatory surveys on land use, which were undertaken with the active involvement of the population at all stages of the process and were based on a transparent data entry system and on reliable and long-term information. Data compilation and validation were entrusted to the participating stakeholders.

Amadou signed a PVI with the owner of the plot that he farms. “The land use agreements have made my wish come true. With my yield and the sale of by-products, I can now cover my children’s school fees for the entire year and feed the family for six months,” he commented. Thanks to the money he has earned, Amadou has also managed to buy two goats and purchase a cart on credit. He has already paid off half of this loan. During the rest of the year, when he cannot work because the land is flooded, he supplements his income through small-scale business activities in Nouakchott.

The process leading up to the adoption of the land use agreements took two years. A national committee composed of people originally from Maghama and now living in Nouakchott acted as an interface with administrative authorities and as a facilitator on behalf of the groups involved. During the process, the villages had to organize themselves and set up village committees, with the mandate to discuss, reach decisions on and sign the land tenure agreements. A committee of elders acted as a decision-making body to facilitate the process and prevent the emergence of conflicts. An official ceremony marked the signing of the land tenure agreement by 24 village committee presidents and Maghama land authority representatives.

For further information, please contact
Cristiana Sparacino. Country programme manager
[email protected]
Salikou Ould Aghoub, Directeur du projet
[email protected]

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Trading commodities via SMS

Lack of access to reliable and up-to-date market price information is a serious problem for smallholder farmers across Africa. Without this information, they are vulnerable to unscrupulous traders who give them prices at below-market rates. And they are reluctant to diversify into different cash crops for fear of not finding a profitable market for their output.

The IFAD-supported Smallholder Enterprise and Marketing Programme (SHEMP) in Zambia introduced an innovative way to address this problem. Under its agribusiness component (one of three components that include road access and group formation), it put in place an SMS Market Information Service in cooperation with the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU). The service provides up-to-date market prices, listing buyers for 12 major commodities in a cost-effective, accessible and reliable manner.

The SMS system, which was launched in August 2006, is very simple to use. To obtain the best prices for a commodity, farmers simply send an SMS message containing the first four letters of the commodity name to the number 4455. Within seconds, they receive a text message communicating the best prices by buyer, using abbreviated buyers’ codes. A farmer who wishes to get best prices in a specific district or province simply includes the district or province code after the commodity code.

After selecting the buyer that best suits their needs, farmers can send a second SMS message with the abbreviated buyer’s code to 4455. A text message is sent back with the contact name and phone number of the buyer, the full name and address of the company and simple directions for reaching both. Farmers are then able to phone the contact and start trading. Each SMS message costs approximately US$0.15. Commodities that are part of the market information service include maize, beans, groundnuts, soybeans, sunflower, sorghum, wheat, rice, cassava, beef, sheep, pigs, goats andhoney.

The SHEMP programme is looking into extending the system to cross-border trade with Zambia’s neighbours. For this purpose, Katanga Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known as the Congolese copper belt, was chosen as the most suitable pilot region. Katanga Province’s population is similar in size to that of Zambia. It has 11 million consumers, and thanks to proceeds from copper mining many of its consumers are willing and able to buy Zambian agricultural products.

Since September 2007, a cross-border SMS market information service has been providing farmers and traders with daily information on stock availability, indicative market prices and sales trends. Congolese traders can access the information in French through Vodacom DRC, and Zambian traders and farmers receive data in English through AfriConnect/Celtel.

For further information, please contact:
Carla Ferreira,Country programme manager, Eastern and Southern Africa Division, [email protected]

Useful links

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Stories from the field

Côte d'Ivoire: Surviving the civil war through agriculture

  Côte d’Ivoire: Surviving the civil war through agriculture
 

 

In Côte d'Ivoire,an extension worker shows families in an agricultural cooperative in Akpouibo, 35 km south of Bouaké,
that soy beans are a source of nutritional foods such as milk.
IFAD photo by Christine Nesbitt

Before the outbreak of the civil war in Cote d’Ivoire, IFAD was carrying out the Marketing and Local Initiatives Support Project in the Centre-North Region in partnership with the West African Development Bank and the Ivorian government. The overall objective of the project was to improve the living conditions of women and smallholder households, mainly by increasing agricultural cash income in a sustainable manner. Despite the war, the project survived because the people took the initiative after project staff were forced to abandon the region.

The project started its operations in 1997. It provided training to villagers in improved farming techniques, and introduced new high-yield plant varieties with the support of the Suisse Centre for Scientific Research (CSRS). Local management committees were set up and some villagers were trained to pass on the training to the others. The war broke out in mid-September 2002, when the first trainees who had benefited from seed loans had not yet repaid the loans.

The project coordination unit left Bouaké, the region’s main town, as their premises were destroyed during the war. IFAD halted the disbursement of funds for the project in 2004 and 2005, but thanks to the tenacity of the villagers, activities continued until completion of the project in 2007.

“Before the war broke out, the project had trained me in the cultivation of soya and some new yam and cassava varieties. They also gave me some seeds that I was supposed to reimburse upon harvest,” says Coulibaly Yao, a beneficiary of the project from N’Gorla village, some 134 km northeast of Bouaké. “Upon harvest, since the project was no longer there, I decided to give the seeds to another villager and taught him how to plant the new varieties,” he adds.

Kouassi N’Dri  says that before the outbreak of the war he was given four Guinea pig breeders, the cost of which he was supposed to reimburse. Like Coulibaly, Kouassi lent some of the breeders to another villager. The IFAD mission in charge of preparing a report on the project’s completion noted that the number of people raising Guinea pigs has risen from 20 before the war to over 60 in 2007.

Coulibaly said that many other villagers did as he had done, and this led to an increase in the production of vegetables, fruits and palm oil, surpluses of which were sold in the local market. “And that is how we got through the difficult period,” he says. But they had problems selling their production because the producers’ sales office (BVP) in the central market in Bouaké closed down. “With the BVP we had regular information on prices in the market, and the prices were better than what traders who go down to the villages offered,” says Kouakou Adjo Eugenie, a soya bean producer in Bodokro village, some 60 km north-west of Bouaké. With the resumption of the project after the end of the war, the BVP has been reopened.

The water supply network set up by the project also survived the period of chaos because the villagers were able to pay for the upkeep of water pumps. During the war most of them managed to secure their funds in a bank in Abidjan.

There is evidence that the people who benefited from the project’s support and investments and have survived the civil war will be able to pursue their activities. There is hope that they will carry on their own development.

For further information, please contact
Mohamed Tounessi, Country programme manager
[email protected]

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Ghana: IFAD support helps transform rural and community banks into top-performing businesses

  Ghana: IFAD support helps transform rural and community banks into top-performing businesses
 

 

In Ghana, the Rural Finances Services Project has bridged the gap between the informal, semi-formal and formal financial sectors
IFAD photo by Robert Grossman

For the past six years IFAD has been part of a rural bank success story in Ghana, through the Rural Financial Services Project. Launched in 2002, the project is financed by IFAD, the International Development Association, the African Development Bank and the Government of Ghana. The project is working to improve access to financial services for rural people throughout the country. It is helping some 150 rural and community banks improve the quality, variety and efficiency of their services.

In 2005, 19 rural and community banks were ranked among the top 100 private companies in Ghana, and they received awards for high business proficiency from the Ghana Investment Promotion Council. The Council launched the awards in 1998 to give recognition to the 100 best-performing companies in Ghana. The companies are rated on the basis of size, profitability, growth, potential for employment and corporate social responsibility. Ghana’s Business & Financial Times reported that rural banks ‘had stolen the show’, making their way into the Ghana Club 100.

The Rural Finances Services Project has bridged the gap between the informal, semi-formal and formal financial sectors and helped build the capacities of the rural and microfinance institutions. It has strengthened operational links between microfinance institutions and the network of rural and community banks, enabling them to expand their services to a larger number of rural clients.

The project has supported nearly 400 registered institutions and apex organizations. When the project started in 2002, these banks served about 1.3 million clients. This figure was estimated to be more than 3 million by the end of 2007. 

The project also established the ARB Apex Bank, which functions as a ‘mini central bank’ to provide banking and non-banking services to rural and community banks throughout Ghana. On 16 November 2006, John A. Kufuor, the President of Ghana, commissioned the ARB Apex Bank head office and Accra branch building. He also announced that the government was allocating US$18 million from the Millennium Challenge Account to support the computerization of Ghana’s rural and community banks. Analysts say that this will help the banks make their operations more efficient.

The ARB Apex Bank plays an important role in strengthening Ghana’s rural banking system. The challenge now will be for it to become a commercially viable entity and end its reliance on government and donor funding.

For further information, please contact:
Mohamed Manssouri, Country programme manager, [email protected]
Daniel Asare-Mintah, Project coordinator, [email protected]

Useful links

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Senegal: Improving livelihoods through environmental conservation in Diourbel

  Senegal: Improving livelihoods through environmental conservation in Diourbel
 

 

In Fatick, Senegal, women water a vegetable garden planted under an Acacia albida tree.
IFAD photo by Roberto Faidutti

The standard of living of thousands of people has improved in Diourbel, Senegal, as a result of tree planting and improved agricultural techniques. Improved farming techniques such as the delimitation of farmland and assisted natural regeneration has led to greater soil fertility. These results were achieved under the IFAD-supported Agroforestry Project to Combat Desertification, completed in December 2007.

“At first, it was total desert here,” says Modou Kamara, a villager in Keur Ousmane Kane, Senegal. “People used to dig little circles in the soil to dry bissap, and there was a scarcity of food,” he adds. But today, the village of Keur Ousmane Kane is full of trees, and people cultivate tomatoes, cabbages, garden eggs, carrots and onions around marshy areas. “In a nutshell, we cultivate all types of vegetables that go into our dishes. I can say we live better than people in Dakar,” says Kamara.

People have planted vegetables and fruit trees such as mangoes, guavas, lemon and acajou. Villagers now own tree plantations, and the rate of tree felling has been greatly reduced. The trees provide cover from the scorching heat of the sun, and men gather under the trees after prayer to discuss and socialize.

The project went beyond encouraging tree planting and teaching people improved agricultural techniques. It also provided them with drinking water, and opened up roads between farms and markets. It helped people become functionally literate and it set up village provision stores. Mbaye Faye is the president of the village development committee of Keur Mbar, and he says that he bought sugar for the village store with 30,000 CFA francs (US$72.05) awarded by IFAD as a cash prize for setting up the largest tree nursery in the village. Sale of the sugar enabled the village committee to make a profit of 50,000 CFA francs ($120.04) and to gradually acquire other items such as rice and tea. The project offered the committee 12 barrels of millet. Today, says the president, the committee is making a monthly profit of 500,000 CFA francs ($1,200).

“Before the project, women got up as early as 3am to go and fetch water,” says Ndiougassa Ndjol, a beneficiary in Keur Massamba Niang village. “Today, women get up at any time they like and fetch water from the pump and have more time to devote to the other household chores and income-generating activities,” he adds.

The project has put in place 126 village development committees, 20 management committees for multipurpose buildings, 30 management committees for the exploitation of marshy areas and 23 associations of water point users. The project helped some 4,500 people reach functional literacy, and among them 95 per cent are women. To increase agricultural productivity, many peasants were trained as trainers of other villagers in new farming techniques and the transformation of agricultural products. In all, 1,460 people benefited from the training, and 41 per cent of them were women. Farmers also received training in management. Almost 300 tree nurseries were set up, and over 850,000 plants were grown for planting. Some 431 linear plantations were created and over 19 km of rural roads were constructed.

This list of achievements is not exhaustive. As Maguette Diop, president of a women’s association in Keur Massamba Niang village, put it, “If I have to list all the things IFAD has done for us, we will spend the night here.”

For further information, please contact
Sylvie Marzin, Country programme manager
[email protected]
Mamadou Kane, Country presence officer
[email protected]

Useful links

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News and events

New loans and grants approved by IFAD’s Executive Board in Western and Central Africa

New network will improve knowledge sharing and innovation in sub-Saharan Africa
IFAD’s Executive Board has approved a grant that will help establish FIDAfrique-IFADAfrica, a new knowledge network in sub-Saharan Africa for IFAD-funded programmes and projects and for its development partners.

The new network will build on existing initiatives, including FIDAfrique in Western and Central Africa and the four IFAD-supported thematic knowledge networks in Eastern and Southern Africa. These initiatives have until now been implemented separately.

The network will connect people, organizations, development projects and programmes and other networks working to reduce rural poverty across sub-Saharan Africa so they can share experiences, mutual learning and innovation for rural poverty reduction. It will also increase the development effectiveness of IFAD-financed programmes and projects and enhance policy dialogue.

IFAD will contribute US$2 million towards the US$3.93 three-year programme. The West Africa Rural Foundation (WARF), an experienced foundation currently managing the Central and Western Africa knowledge network, FIDAfrique, will manage the grant.

Western and Central Africa to receive US$4.25 million in loans
The 93rd session of IFAD’s Executive Board, which met in Rome from 24 to 25 April, approved US$12.42 million in grants to support agricultural research and development activities in rural regions of poor countries in the world.   

In Cape Verde, a loan of US$4.25 million will help strengthen and expand the work of the existing Rural Poverty Alleviation Programme. The additional funds will improve the lives of about 60,000 poor rural people, particularly women, by further integrating them into Cape Verde’s fast-growing economy. The programme will improve food security and nutrition, diversify incomes, improve market access, and raise production and productivity in agriculture, fisheries and livestock. The existing Rural Alleviation Programme will be expanded to cover all rural areas of Cape Verde, using legal, institutional and financial mechanisms that have already proved effective in reducing rural poverty during the first two stages of the programme. 

Useful links
US$72 million in loans and grants for rural poverty programmes and projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America

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Burkina Faso: Start-up workshop for the Agricultural Commodity Chain Support Project

  Burkina Faso: Start-up workshop for the Agricultural Commodity Chain Support Project
 

 

Denise Guingane Zigani, of Garango, Burkina Faso,dries vegetables quickly and cleanly inside a dryer that utilizes the heat of the sun..
© 2008 Aubrey Wade. All rights reserved.

The Governor of the Northern Region, Henri Dieudonné Marie Yaméogo, has officially launched the Start-Up Workshop of the new IFAD-supported Agricultural Commodity Chain Support Project on 7 and 8 February 2008 in Ouahigouya, in the presence of the mayor of the town, government officials, local and traditional authorities and Norman Messer, IFAD Country programme manager. In his opening speech, the governor said, “The Government of Burkina Faso has adopted a development strategy based on the promotion of a productive and competitive agriculture sector, centred on the development of agricultural commodity chains.” He added, “In this regard, the new project is fully in line with the national policy framework and my country is grateful to IFAD for its constant support.”
 
The objectives of the workshop were to present the project to the partners, presenting its approaches, areas and methodology of intervention, principles of engagement and collaboration with project beneficiaries and service providers. The workshop was an opportunity for stakeholders to exchange, discuss and fine-tune implementation modalities. Representatives of farmer organizations and microfinance institutions, farmers and processors, NGOs, staff of technical ministries and of agriculture and rural sector projects in the country, as well as representatives of the region’s local administration attended the two-day workshop.

About 20,000 rural households will improve their livelihoods through the project, which is the first IFAD-funded operation of this kind in Burkina Faso. It will foster local-level complementarity with a World Bank-funded operation that intervenes mainly at the macro-level. The project will strengthen the commodity chain of five commodities: cowpea, sesame, goats/sheep, poultry and onions, which offer significant opportunities for poor rural people to boost their incomes. It will focus on activities in the North, Central North, Boucle du Mouhoun and Sahel regions in the north of the country.

The project will help farmers, pastoralists, local entrepreneurs and others to process the commodities into more marketable products that can be sold at higher prices. It intends to become a model operation in terms of pro-poor commodity chain and market access development. It also features a number of innovative elements, including emphasis on supporting commodity chain organizations in developing business plans, providing services, and improving their governance capacity, in order to better support and manage transactions.

For further information
Norman Messer, Country programme manager
[email protected]

Useful links

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Democratic Republic of Congo: A new project launched in the Oriental Province

The Agricultural Rehabilitation Programme in the Oriental Province held its launch workshop on 5 and 6 December in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.

François Joseph Mobuto Nzanga Ngbangawe, Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, chaired the opening ceremony of the workshop. Also present at the ceremony were Hubert Ali Ramazani, Secretary of State for Agriculture, Leopold Sarr, IFAD Country programme manager, representatives of UNOPS, UN agencies and many partners and stakeholders. In his opening statement, Minister Mobuto Nzanga Ngbangawe called upon project beneficiaries “to fully commit themselves and participate in the implementation of the new, only way to guarantee its success.”

The project’s goal is to increase access to markets and production zones, and strengthen the self-promotional and management skills of rural populations and their grass-roots organizations. The project aims also to reinforce the capacity of public services to support rural development, intensify, diversify and add value to agricultural and fisheries production and improve access to basic social services. Participants in this lively workshop mainly recommended transparent management and open dissemination of information through all channels, including sensitization and training workshops.

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Mali: IFAD-supported programmes start operations in Mopti and Kidal

  Mali: IFAD-supported programmes start operations in Mopti and Kidal
 

 

Women in the Kayes region of Mali carry harvested millet.  
IFAD photo by Roberto Faidutti

Two workshops took place in Mali in March, the first launched the Global Environment Facility (GEF) grant in the context of the Sahelian Development Fund Programme (SADEF) and the second marked the start of the Integrated Rural Development Programme in the Kidal Region (PIDRK).

At the first workshop, on 4 March, the US$6 million GEF grant extending the scope of SADEF activities to Mopti was inaugurated. Alhassane Aghatam Ag, Minister of Environment and Environmental Health, chaired the workshop’s opening ceremony. Leopold Sarr, IFAD Country Programme Manager, and the GEF and BOAD representatives were present, as were many stakeholders. The meeting was an opportunity to present the biodiversity GEF component, and its objectives and synergies with the SADEF programme.

At the second workshop, on 6 and 7 March, Tiemoko Sangaré, Minister of Agriculture, accompanied by four other ministers and Lansry Nana Yaya Haidara, the Commissioner of Food Security, lead agency for the programme, participated in the start-up workshop for PIDRK in Kidal. Beneficiaries and representatives of partners such as the West Africa Development Bank and the Belgium Survival Fund, as well as local authorities, attended the workshop. The Northern Regions of Mali are a priority area for the government and for IFAD, who is lead donor in the region. The meeting was a forum for pointing out the difficulties of operating in such a remote area and discussing ways to implement the project in an effective manner, proving that it is possible to operate in difficult areas and potentially attract other donors. 

For further information, please contact
Leopold Sarr, Country programme manager
[email protected]

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