المعرفة

South-South and triangular cooperation has an enormous potential role in agriculture and rural development in developing countries, both in unlocking diverse experiences and lessons and in providing solutions to pressing development challenges.

From the cases that follow, a number of common lessons emerge. First, it is important to create a space for interaction and cross-country learning. In the Scaling up Micro-Irrigation Systems project or with the household mentoring approach, for instance, workshops and ‘writeshops’ gathered people from diverse countries who could then share their own knowledge and experiences. In such spaces, participants could compare how a similar approach or technology required certain adaptations to better fit with local cultural, social and environmental contexts, offering important lessons for future scaling up.

Sometimes individual champions can make a difference. In Madagascar, the project design for a public/private partnership improved drastically when an IFAD consultant with similar experience in another country became involved. In this case, it was also an ‘unexpected outcome’, as the innovation came from a replacement for the regular consultant, who had broken his foot …. So even through small staff changes, knowledge of a complementary innovation from another country can have a big impact.

​Biodiversity is about more than plants, animals, and micro-organisms and their ecosystems – the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 1992) recognizes that it is also very much about people and our need for food security, medicines, fresh air, shelter, and a clean and healthy environment. Biodiversity is also essential for the maintenance of ecosystem-based services, such as the provision of water and food for human, animal and plant life. When we make an effort to conserve biodiversity, we are helping to maintain critical global biological resources to meet our needs today as well as those of future generations. Biodiversity conservation is therefore central to achieving recent global commitments for sustainable development under “Agenda 2030”, adopted by the United Nations in 2015. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) recognizes that losing biodiversity means losing opportunities for coping with future challenges, such as those posed by climate change and food insecurity. 

​This report is aimed at readers who seek to build economic evidence in support of the inclusion of actions on agriculture in climate change plans and programmes, particularly at the national level under the umbrella of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the December 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to restrict a rise in global temperatures and manage risks. Agriculture is a sector especially sensitive to climate change. It also accounts for significant emissions and is, therefore, a priority for both adaptation and mitigation plans and actions at global, national and local levels. 

In Benin, agriculture plays a central role in the national economy, contributing 32 per cent of GDP and employing a large part of the workforce. Despite significant productive potential and a diversified agricultural sector (crop production, livestock, non‑timber forest products, fisheries), the country relies heavily on imports of food products, which represent 25 per cent of the total value of imports.

Since 1979, IFAD has financed 14 rural development projects for a total of US$268.6 million.

This report focuses on African National Postal Operators (NPOs) as one of the several distribution channels for remittances and financial services.

The Second African Conference on Remittances and Postal Networks was organized in the framework of the African Postal Financial Services Initiative (APFSI), and took place on 15-16 November 2016 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.

Rural development in Gabon depends largely on growth in the agro-sylvo-pastoral subsector, but the development of the country’s agricultural potential remains incipient. The various strategies adopted by the Government since independence have not succeeded in revitalizing the sector. Currently the agriculture sector employs about 40 per cent of the country’s rural population, although it contributes just 5 per cent of GDP and represents just 0.7 per cent of the government budget. Agricultural land occupies 20 per cent (5.2 million hectares) of the country’s territory, contrasting with the small share of sector activity taking place on less than 10 per cent of arable land. The rural population, which accounted for 20 per cent of the Gabonese people in 2000, is falling steadily as the urban population grows, and represented just 13 per cent of the population in 2013.

More than half of the Philippines’ 100 million people live in rural areas and many of them are poor. Agriculture is the primary and often only source of income for poor rural people, most of whom depend on subsistence farming and fishing for their livelihoods. Illiteracy, unemployment and the incidence of poverty are generally higher among indigenous peoples and people living in upland areas.

Present in each continent and covering over 40 per cent of the earth, drylands generally refer to arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, and are home to more than 2 billion people.