Map of IFAD Operations in the Country Summary of country strategy (maximum of 1 page) This one-page summary should focus only on presenting the key strategic sections of the COSOP, such as the strategic objectives, the selected target group, etc. I. Introduction (0.5 page)The introduction states the period (in years) covered by the previous and the new COSOPs; the duration of the COSOP will be flexible in order to respond to differing country settings and situations. The introduction then describes the COSOP preparation process, including preparatory studies, stakeholder consultation events (e.g. workshops, focus group discussions, participatory rural appraisals) with key dates, including any final wrap-up meeting with the government. Participation in key events should be as gender balanced as possible. The introduction may also include, as a footnote, a list of members (and their expertise) of the final COSOP mission. A. Economic, Agricultural and Rural Poverty Context (approximately 2.5 pages) (i) Country economic background (approximately 0.5 page) Brief summary with key data on overall income per capita, GDP growth, population growth, inflation, and major constraints and opportunities. Data may be obtained from Economic Intelligence Unit reports, World Development Indicators and UNDP Human Development Indicators. (ii) Agriculture and rural poverty (approximately 2 pages) Drawing where possible on the poverty diagnosis contained in national poverty strategies, this section provides an overview of poverty (and its gender dimensions) within the rural sector. Information should be included on trends in poverty levels (progress towards the Millennium Development Goals) and income distribution. A summary should be given of the causes of rural poverty and constraints/opportunities for poverty reduction, including reference to the key biophysical, social, cultural, institutional and political dimensions of rural poverty (e.g. a discussion on key power relationships that affect inequality and rural poverty). There should be a summary of gender-related constraints and opportunities (gender empowerment measure [GEM] and gender-related development index [GDI] data). Processes of marginalization of particularly vulnerable groups (e.g. indigenous/ethnic minorities) should be mentioned. There should also be a discussion on key emerging issues in rural poverty. The performance of the agricultural/rural sector should be summarized, and the main constraints on agricultural sector growth mentioned. If appropriate, reference should be made to linkages between this sector, the wider rural economy and poverty reduction.
B. Policy, Strategy and Institutional Context (approximately 2 pages) (i) National institutional context A short description of IFAD’s intended partner institutions (government and civil society) for COSOP implementation, their strengths and weaknesses, and key opportunities for capacity-building. (ii) National rural poverty reduction strategy A description of key elements of the existing national poverty reduction strategy, in particular the elements that relate to IFAD. This section should also include reference to relevant rural sector strategies. (iii) Harmonization and alignment This section should describe the current status of harmonization activities at the country level, and how IFAD is working with other donors and with the government to harmonize its activities. This may include: (i) IFAD participation in country- and sector-level donor coordination forums; (ii) joint activities with donors, such as joint studies and reviews, cofinanced or parallel-financed projects; (iii) relevant SWAps; (iv) coordination of support through joint assistance frameworks; (v) IFAD should be part of the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (this discussion will evolve pending the outcome of United Nations reform initiatives); (vi) adoption of harmonized approaches for project implementation, such as common procurement or reporting procedures. A. Past Results, Impact and Performance This section outlines the results from the previous COSOP period. It could be based on indicators from the results management framework of the last COSOP (ref. aggregation of RIMS data, PBAS assessments, country programme evaluations [CPEs] and other evaluations). However, as results management frameworks will only be used in COSOPs starting in December 2006, it will be some years before the framework for a completed COSOP will be available. Until then, this section could contain a short evaluation of achievements from IFAD activities (including loans, grants, policy dialogue, partnerships, knowledge management) during the period of the previous COSOP relative to the objectives set by the previous COSOP. The performance of the IFAD country programme in terms of project-at-risk ratings and project management issues should be evaluated and any constraints/problems identified. Key lessons learned from IFAD activities during the previous COSOP period should be described (this may be in a bullet format). This will mainly relate to Section III.A (past performance). If a CPE or other country-level evaluation has been recently carried out, lessons may be taken from these reports. A. IFAD Comparative Advantage at the Country Level This should be a short paragraph outlining – with reference to IFAD’s strategic framework, regional strategy, and history of operations in the country concerned – the areas where IFAD has specific competencies at the country level. This will help in selecting themes for future operations and in harmonizing IFAD activities with those of other donors. Areas of comparative advantage may include the following:
This is the core section of the COSOP. This section should normally be written at the time when the Results Management Framework is prepared. Three SOs should be selected (this could be increased up to five if clearly warranted). An SO can be defined as the highest-order change in behaviour that an IFAD project or other activity can hope to directly influence. It may be considered as equivalent to a purpose-level objective in a logframe, and is similar to the “outcomes” that are used in other donor results frameworks (see Box 1 below for current definitions). Some examples of possible COSOP SOs are shown in Appendix III of the COSOP Guidelines. SOs should be written as “change statements” using words such as improve, increase, adopt and establish. The selection process itself for three strategic objectives of a country programme will be influenced by the PRSP objectives/targets (or alternative) and by the objectives of the new IFAD strategic framework (see hierarchy of objectives in Appendix II ). This section of the COSOP will also include details on the indicators that will be used to measure achievement of the selected strategic objectives. The selection of the strategic objectives themselves will be influenced inter alia by: (i) the national poverty reduction strategy (or its equivalent); (ii) IFAD competencies in the country concerned; (iii) background poverty analysis and associated studies; and (iv) review of donor plans to avoid overlaps and to identify partnership opportunities. The section should clearly explain the link between each of these strategic objectives and reducing rural poverty. It should also clearly show the alignment between the selected strategic objective and the major objectives, themes or pillars of the national poverty reduction strategy (or alternative national strategy), and with IFAD’s strategic framework and regional strategy. C. Opportunities for Innovation This subsection identifies potential innovation ideas/areas for each of the selected strategic objectives. It also identifies the intended innovation approach (for example: scoping, testing, validation, communication of results, replication) to be adopted by IFAD. If possible, the section should identify existing IFAD funded activities/initiatives that already have scale-up potential. The section should describe the mechanisms IFAD will employ to encourage scaling up of successful IFAD-financed innovations by other partners (for example: communications strategies targeted to particular partners). This section will seek to link research work funded by IFAD grants (both in the country and elsewhere) to future projects that could benefit from innovations. This section would be supplemented by a separate Appendix XIII entitled “Project Pipeline” which will provide details on projects to be developed during the COSOP period. It should be noted that this list should not be interpreted as a promise of commitment, but as a highly indicative list of potential projects, that is susceptible to modification in response to changing country circumstances during the COSOP period. A key element that sometimes differentiates IFAD from other donors is its exclusive targeting of the rural poor. A COSOP may have a targeting strategy to focus activities on specific sub-groups within the rural poor or less-favoured regions. This section will briefly describe such targeted sub-groups for each strategic objective, and the intended targeting approaches to be applied (i.e. as direct project participants, or beneficiaries of project-supported growth and employment opportunities). More detailed information on each of these target groups would be included in Key File Table 4: Target groups for the COSOP and proposed IFAD response. Gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment Gender analysis should be incorporated into the COSOP, and in line with IFAD’s targeting policy gender is presented as a component of targeting. However gender issues should be also mainstreamed throughout the report and the report should describe specific strategies required to empower women and their organisations. To facilitate this, a COSOP gender issue checklist has been drawn up in Appendix VII of the Guidelines. See Key File 4 – Target Group Identification, Priority Issues and Potential Response Linked to each of the selected strategic objectives will be a policy dimension. Key intentions for policy changes will be identified in this section for each strategic objective, along with an explanation of how IFAD intends to influence such changes (through events such as workshops, studies, visits, training, replication and scaling up, work with other donors, etc.). It should be noted that IFAD’s engagement in policy issues is driven primarily by policy-relevant issues that emerge from IFAD’s project activities, rather than by a broad-based policy engagement. The section will also describe IFAD’s proposed role in assisting the government with rural poverty strategy/policy formulation and, in particular, IFAD’s interface with the in-country processes of national poverty reduction strategy formulation, implementation, revision, updating, improvement, etc. (e.g. through participation in joint government/donor poverty reduction strategy groups). This section should describe the M&E arrangements for COSOP implementation itself, e.g. (i) the process of annual reporting on selected indicators by the country programme manager during COSOP implementation (using the COSOP results management framework, project status reports, aggregated RIMS reports and country programme issues sheet); (ii) arrangements for a COSOP mid-term review; and (iii) arrangements for self-evaluation at COSOP completion or CPE. Proposed dates for the mid-term review and COSOP completion evaluation will be stated. This section will describe how IFAD will manage country activities in the coming COSOP period, including: (i) any field presence arrangements;(ii) country programme management team arrangements; (iii) annual country programme implementation review workshops; and (iv) diversified programme supervision arrangements (for loans, grants). With respect to loan/grant supervision, there should be a short review of the country context and requirements with respect to supervision issues, with full reference to the IFAD supervision policy. In particular, attention should be placed on ensuring that supervision can serve as a basis for improved impact, knowledge management, learning and partnerships at country level. This section will also describe the priorities and intended actions to improve project at risk (PAR) ratings, and therefore the PBAS country score. This PAR improvement agenda could be presented in bullet form. For example, if audit quality is a generic problem in the country programme, this section will describe the intended approach to improve the PAR ratings on audit. Finally, this section will explain the actions required to retrofit existing IFAD operations in the country to the newly proposed COSOP. In terms of the results management framework, the existing operations will be reported in addition to the new operations. For the purpose of COSOPs, the following definitions of partnership will apply:
This section of the COSOP will describe the partnerships that are intended to be established in the delivery of each COSOP strategic objective. In terms of COSOP implementation, these partnerships could be for the purpose of project implementation, policy dialogue, innovation or knowledge management. Partners may include government agencies, donors, NGOs, farmers’ organizations (or other member based organizations), community-based organizations and the private sector. Partnerships with other donors may involve cofinancing, sector-wide approaches, joint policy work and sharing of experience. This section will describe how IFAD intends to achieve effective partnerships (for example: preparation of partnership-tracking matrixes, regular strategic bilateral meetings, video conferencing) and what the specific objectives are of the identified partnerships. D. Knowledge Management and Communication This section of the COSOP will articulate IFAD’s knowledge management strategy relative to country-level objectives. The COSOP should provide a platform to ensure that knowledge is fed back into the corporate level knowledge management processes. Above all, it will ensure that this local knowledge and experience is effectively mobilized in IFAD’s country-level policy dialogue, programme implementation and programme development work. At the country level, IFAD will adopt a learning approach to M&E in IFAD-financed country programmes. Through M&E the local and programme-level learnings will be directly used to improve the effectiveness of the country programme and further distilled and fed into the regional networks and IFAD’s relevant thematic communities of practice. They will also be disseminated at country-level with a view to influence local and national policies and strategies. The learning process will involve all stakeholders (farmer and community organizations, indigenous people’s organizations, civil society organizations, private sector) and be enriched by increasing the participation of poor rural people and their organizations in monitoring and evaluation, since they are best placed to assess project impact. For more information, see appendix 14: Guidelines on knowledge management and appendix 15: Guidelines on strategic communication in country programmes This section will describe the parameters for calculating the allocation of IFAD resources (loans and grants) for the COSOP implementation period. The section will include the full PBAS calculation for COSOP year 1. This will show the PAR and rural sector scores and the final country score and annual allocation for COSOP year 1 (see table below for an example).
The actual allocations for COSOP years 2, 3, 4, etc., are generated by a PBAS formula on an annual basis, and are affected by almost 100 variables and many combinations of these variables. Therefore, allocations for future years cannot be predicted in COSOP year 1 with certainty. In line with IFAD’s IFI partners, the outlining of different funding scenarios and allocations over the whole COSOP period linked to predetermined policy change priorities (triggers) will not be required for IFAD COSOPs. However, what can be provided is a hypothetical projection, showing the implications for the country score when there is an increase or decrease in the PAR and rural sector scores. The COSOP will include such a table showing scenarios for a base case, a low-performance case and a high-performance case. These scenarios will illustrate the implications of changes in PAR rating by 1 and rural sector performance by 0.3 on the PBAS country score. An example of this is shown in the table below.
This is a new section for the COSOP and has been included due to the deletion of the logframe. The risks attached to each strategic objective should be briefly described (policy, institutional, technical, political or financial/economic), together with actions that IFAD will take to mitigate and manage these risks. Risk management could involve designing projects in such a way as to reduce risk, e.g. by selecting partners and activities that avoid areas of risk. For instance, it may be necessary to reduce resources for a strategic objective where, although there are significant potential benefits, proposed policy change has not come about so risks are considerable. Risk management also relates to portfolio management, with management actions designed to reduce risk – such as more intensive project supervision. Total 14 pages
Key Files Key File 1 - Rural Poverty and Agricultural/Rural Sector Issues * Appendices included in Programme Management Department and Operational Strategy and Policy Guidance Committee versions of the COSOP, but omitted from Executive Board version. |
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