Project ID: 1015
Executive Board Document: EB-99-67-R-14

Rural Poverty All eviation Programme

Cape Verde is faced with a combination of environmental and socio-economic challenges due to extremely harsh climatic conditions, inequitable land tenure, limited fishery resources and few economic opportunities. The result is a very high incidence of poverty, about 70%. In November 1997, the Government finalized its own poverty policy and strategy and presented the National Programme to Alleviate Poverty (PNLP) at a donors' round table. The costs of the PNLP were estimated at USD 75 million. The key goals of the nine-year IFAD-initiated programme are to develop rural peoples' institutions that will mobilize common-interest groups and communities and enhance the ability of their emerging leaders to develop effective partnership relations with other organizations in the private and public sector. Specifically the programme seeks to:

- create more income for programme beneficiaries;

- establish better access to social services;

- improve living conditions for poor people in the areas selected for programme intervention; and

- establish arrangements for mutual cooperation between the civil-society organizations engaged in the fight against poverty and the public authorities whose task it is to support and serve them.

It will also assist the Government's ongoing efforts towards decentralized rural development.

The programme is national in scope, but is initially limited to the poorest and most populous islands, which contain over two thirds of the rural poor of Cape Verde. It concentrates on farmers with rainfed lands, who constitute the poorest socio-economic group and have minimal access to land; poor artisanal communities; food-insecure and/or women-headed households; and unemployed youth.

Innovative Features:

- The programme will build on the Government's decentralization policy, which supports the establishment of regional commissions of partners (CRPs) as associations under private law, one in each of the four prog ramme areas. Membership of the CRPs will include representatives of local communities and common-interest groups, NGOs operating in the area, and representatives of municipalities and decentralized government services that join on a voluntary basis.

- Financial resources will be provided to each CRP participating in the programme. Decisions on allocations of resources to fund individual microprojects will be made by the general assemblies of the CRPs, in which local communities and common-interest groups will hold the majority of votes. By utilizing such an approach, the programme provides a mechanism that enables associations of rural poor to join as equal partners both in implementing the Government's poverty-alleviation policy in accordance with their own strategic choices and in selecting microprojects to implement that policy. Thus, the programme concentrates on institutional and procedural aspects rather than on the specific content of its poverty-alleviation interventions.

- The programme will be implemented in three distinct phases, under the flexible lending mechanism, and should enhance the Government's decentralization policy by transferring responsibilities and resources from the central to the local government level.

Loan Amount:

SDR 7.0 million (approximately USD 9.3 million) on highly concessional terms.

Total Programme Costs:

Estimated at USD 18.3 million, of which USD 6.6 million will be provided by the Government and USD 2.5 million by the beneficiaries.

Cooperating Institution:

UNOPS.