IFAD/NGO Field Collaboration - The Beginnings

In 1976, an NGO, led by Professor Mohammed Yunus of Chattagong University (Bangladesh), started an innovative approach in a single village to credit delivery to the rural poor, especially to women and the landless. The formation and training of small groups through which loans were provided was a central feature of the initiative. Mobile credit officers brought the service to the villagers, and effective supervision of loan recoveries ensured repayment rates of close to 98%.

IFAD's initial loan, along with a subsequent one in 1984, helped the NGO - which is now the well-known Grameen Bank - to expand its operations. The bank now serves well over one million members, a high percentage of them women, and has been a model for a number of successful rural credit projects in Africa, Asia and even the United States.

Shortly thereafter, IFAD launched the Special Programme for Sub-Saharan African Countries Affected by Drought and Desertification (SPA), which was to become a major contributor to the battle against desertification and drought in the sub-Saharan region. Within the space of ten years, the SPA initiated 47 projects and programmes. It relied upon the participation of the people, institutional development and decentralized government support. As part of this bottom-up approach, it set out to incorporate and develop local know-how and technologies, and sought the direct involvement of new partners in development, such as NGOs.

One example of such collaboration within the context of the SPA was the Food Security Project in the Northern Guéra Region, Chad. The fragile food security of the region is due to uncertain and often-localized rainfall and soil degradation, and income-generating schemes were seen as a relevant mechanism to enable poor households to improve their livelihoods. Prior to the project, access to agricultural credit was limited, but an NGO, the Sécours catolique du développement (SECADEV), provided support to income-generating activities. In cooperation with the project, SECADEV successfully carried out a scheme that extended training and loans to 171 groups (6 064 individuals, 38% of whom were women) to support activities such as petty trading, food processing, cereal banks and gardening.

At the end of 1995, the SPA was absorbed into the Regular Programme of IFAD, and many of the important lessons learned - one of which was collaboration with NGOs - have been applied in projects in developing countries throughout the world.

Today, NGO participation in IFAD projects has grown considerably. As of January 2004, some 1000 NGOs had been involved in IFAD-supported projects compared to 173 in 1993. In terms of regional distribution, 37% of the NGOs working with IFAD are in sub-Saharan Africa; 29% in Asia and the Pacific; 24% in Latin America and the Caribbean; and 10% in the Near East and North Africa. More than 80% of the NGOs are from the south.