Project targeting
Learning note
Print this pageThis Note relates to KSF2: Poverty, social development and targeting
Version: January 2008
Core issues
For IFAD, ‘targeting’ refers to all measures which, in a given context, can either promote or inhibit the flow of benefits to the identified target groups. The borrower and main implementing agency should be committed to poverty-targeted use of project funds, taking into consideration:
- Project or programme design should be based on a solid poverty and livelihoods analysis, to identify which communities and people are poorer and why, taking gender differences into account.
- The principle of social and geographic poverty targeting should be made explicit in the Aide Memoire of the project design team to the government, and the targeting strategy justified and clearly described in the project Appraisal Report and in IFAD’s Loan Agreement (“geographic targeting” selects areas while “social targeting” refers to targeting within communities).
- Where possible, actions and procedures for targeting should connect with specific budget allocations - e.g. through criteria that steer IFAD loan funds towards pro-poor activities or components, or by earmarking some budget lines for specific sub-groups.
- Operational measures should be planned and described to make targeting a reality. These should include:
- Enabling measures to foster a favourable environment, and a pro-poor and gender-sensitive mindset among implementation partners. These include policy dialogue and the appropriate selection and sensitization of implementation partners, to be continually applied throughout the project/programme cycle;
- Self -targeting: ensuring that goods and services on the project ‘menu’ or actually provided respond to the priorities, financial and labour capacity and livelihood strategies of targeted groups;
- Empowering measures: aiming to give the targeted groups equal or even superior capacities to access and qualify for goods and services, including: beneficiary capacity-building; strengthening or promotion of community-based organizations; information and communication to promote awareness of project opportunities and participation amongst the target groups;
- Procedural Measures such as application and approval procedures for accessing funds, locus and modalities of decision making on project activities and beneficiary contribution requirements designed in a way that prevents the exclusion of the poorest (components should be checked to make sure that identified target groups are not unwittingly excluded by and from these procedures);
- Direct or eligibility criteria-based targeting: Eligibility criteria, such as income levels, preferably developed and applied with community participation. Quotas or earmarked funds based on eligibility criteria may also be necessary to ensure a minimum level of participation of specific target groups.
- Implementation reporting by Project Co-ordinating Units and Co-operating Institutions should monitor effectiveness of targeting measures, and cover gender-differentiated participation by, and benefits to, the poorer people and special priority target groups in the project area.
Key tasks for design and review
- Ensure that geographic and social targeting criteria are clearly defined and easily applicable in practice, and socially acceptable.
- Review and take account of evidence of the borrower’s real commitment to poverty targeting – for instance in cases of extensive non-compliance with targeting objectives in previous projects, re-design future targeting mechanisms.
- Clearly specify modalities and institutional responsibilities to monitor and ensure compliance with targeting criteria (e.g. the process to be used for district/village selection, reporting by the PCU and CI, monitoring indicators or quotas on micro-projects to the benefit of certain groups).
- Make social and gender-differentiated livelihood analyses that are sufficient to validate the self-targeting options that are proposed.
- Devise effective means to target and monitor the special needs of pockets of poverty in high-potential areas.
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