المعرفة

IFAD has funded nine programmes and projects in Burundi for a total investment of US$141 million. IFAD’s experience in the country confirms that even under adverse circumstances programmes and projects conceived and designed on the basis of adequate consultations with incentives to rural communities can help improve household food security.

During more than a decade of open conflict in Burundi, IFAD continued to implement programme and project activities. In keeping with its mandate for rural and agricultural development, the organization supported participation in social development and the cohesion of rural communities that were directly or indirectly affected by massacres and combat. By continuing activities in the face of insecurity and within the constraints of an international embargo on Burundi, IFAD helped communities maintain a sense of normalcy.
 

This paper serves as a working document for the youth session of the 2012 Farmers’ Forum and provides an overview of the findings of the MIJARC/IFAD/FAO joint project on ‘Facilitating access of rural youth to agricultural activities’.

These findings will be completed and inserted into a final report that will be published after the Farmers’ Forum. 

Evidence from the ground shows that when strong rural organizations such as producer groups and cooperatives provide a full range of services to small producers, they are able to play a greater role in meeting a growing food demand on local, national and international markets. Indeed, a myriad of such institutional innovations from around the world are documented in this FAO case-study-based publication.

Nevertheless, to be able to provide a broad array of services to their members, organizations have to develop a dense network of relationships among small producers, between small-producer organizations and with markets actors and policy-makers.

The Syrian Arab Republic, like other countries of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, is a dry country that is prone to drought, with large areas of desert or semi-desert that are too fragile to be cultivated but will support grazing for a restricted number of livestock. These areas of ecological fragility, if overgrazed and poorly managed, can quickly become degraded and desertified and, in the worst case scenario, can eventually become biologically sterile. Good management of these resources is therefore critical to maintaining healthy ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend on them.

The DRC is a multi-ethnic country with some 250 ethnic groups, including several indigenous Pygmy groups.

In its efforts to help poor rural people overcome poverty, IFAD aims to ensure that development funds reach them in the most efficient, effective and transparent manner possible. Fraud and corruption divert resources away from the people who need them most. The goal of IFAD’s Policy on Preventing Fraud and Corruption in its Activities and Operations (EB 2005/85/R.5/Rev.1 - “the anticorruption policy”), is the prevention of fraud and corruption within the Fund itself and in activities financed by IFAD at local, national, regional and international levels.