الأدوات والإرشادات

Recent advances in technology and telecommunications have the potential to make financial services more accessible and affordable for smallholder households in rural areas. With digital platforms such as mobile phones, smallholders can now use financial services without having to visit a bank branch. 

This HTDN provides guidance for project design teams on how to design a 4P component and how to support the implementation of 4Ps within IFAD-funded projects.

It builds on findings and lessons learned from previous IFAD-supported projects, as summarized in the 2013 report, IFAD and Public-Private Partnerships: Selected Project Experiences, and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS)/IFAD publication, Brokering Development: Enabling Factors for Public-Private-Producer Partnerships in Agricultural Value Chains.

This HTDN begins by defining the 4P and related concepts and then analyses the basic elements that need to be considered when designing and establishing a 4P followed by recommendations for the implementation of 4Ps.

Advances in digital technology and telecommunications are presenting new financial inclusion opportunities for smallholder farmers in rural areas.1 A growing number of payments, savings, credit and insurance products can be delivered digitally to address the financial needs of smallholder households. Smallholders
can especially benefit from mobile phone platforms, which offer immediate, safe access to government subsidies, cash transfers and remittances. The messaging features of mobile phones can complement digital financial services (DFSs) by offering timely information on weather conditions, farming tips, market
prices and potential buyers, which can help increase farming yields and profitability.

Recent advances in technology and increasing penetration of telecommunication systems into rural areas have the potential to make financial services more accessible to smallholder households. Mobile telephony and data networks, coupled with agent networks, can enable the use of digital payments and savings and
provide a platform for credit and insurance, without smallholders having to visit a bank branch. Mobile phones can also bridge information asymmetries by offering weather forecasts and real-time market prices, which can improve the ability of farmers to prepare and respond to inclement weather and price fluctuations.

 This note helps IFAD design and supervision teams to improve the M&Eindicators of VC projects

The step-by-step approach to VC analysis and project design follows the basic IFAD project design cycle.Each step is briefly described and followed by guiding questions for the project design team. The VC approach should be adopted early in the project cycle, such as when developing project concept notes for a country strategic opportunities programme (COSOP).

Since the mid-1980s, Ghana’s impressive development has made the country one of the strongest performers in Africa, although economic challenges and a fiscal deficit are currently slowing down the pace of growth. 

En dépit de l’abondance des ressources agricoles et pétrolières du pays, la pauvreté est omniprésente au Nigéria et elle n’a cessé de gagner du terrain depuis la fin des annés 90. Environ 70% des habitants vivent avec moins de 1,25 USD par jour. La pauvreté est particulièrement grave en milieu rural où jusqu’à 80% de la population vit en dessous du seuil de pauvreté tandis que les services sociaux et l’infrastructure y sont limités. Les femmes et les hommes pauvres des zones rurales sont tributaires de l’agriculture pour leur nourriture et leurs revenus. Environ 90% de la production vivrière nationale sont fournis par les paysans qui cultivent de petites parcelles et dépendent des pluies plutôt que de l’irrigation. 

​Egypt has undergone dramatic political upheaval over the last four years, following long-simmering grievances over the lack of economic opportunities and political inclusion that led to a revolutionary uprising in early 2011.

With a population of 92 million, Ethiopia is the second most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa and one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, with consistent growth averaging more than 10 per cent over the last ten years. Per capita income is, however, markedly lower than the average for developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole (US$400 compared with US$1,547 per capita per year).1 Much of Ethiopia’s growth is attributable to the agricultural sector, which accounts for about 45 per cent of GDP, almost 90 per cent of exports and 85 per cent of employment. About 90 per cent of the agricultural land under cultivation is devoted to subsistence agriculture. Livestock and livestock products are important in Ethiopia and contribute about 10 per cent of the country’s foreign exchange earnings, with hides and skins constituting about 90 per cent of this.

Peru is an upper-middle-income country with one of the fastest-growing economies in the region. In the last decade, the country more than halved its poverty rate, which fell from 59 to 24 per cent. Reduction was uneven geographically, however. In the rural areas of the highlands and the rainforest areas, poverty still affects about 53 and 43 per cent of the population1 respectively, and particularly indigenous communities. 

The analysis underlying the results-based country strategic opportunities programme for the Republic of the Sudan (RB-COSOP) developed in 2013 identified major constraints on the reduction of rural poverty. These included prolonged conflicts, the separation of South Sudan (2008), reduced oil revenues for the Government of Sudan; greatly increased numbers of people and livestock reliant on static technologies; environmentally and economically unsustainable pressures on finite natural resources exacerbated by the negative impacts of climate change; and little residual capacity within the public sector, all within a problematic geopolitical environment.

Bangladesh has recently been classified as a lower-middle-income country and aims to reach upper-middle-income country status by 2021. To achieve this, the Government of Bangladesh will need to overcome considerable challenges in agricultural development and rural economic growth. The country’s annual GDP growth averaged about 6 per cent between 2000 and 2013, and was accompanied by a decline in the national poverty rate from 48.9 per cent to 31.5 per cent over the first decade of the century, effectively lifting some 16 million people out of poverty.

In terms of population, China, with 1.35 billion people, is the largest country in the world. It is the first developing country to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing by half the number of its people living in extreme poverty and hunger, and only 6.3 per cent of the population were estimated to be living in extreme poverty in 2013. Substantial progress has been made with respect to overall development and China is now considered in the high human development category of UNDP’s Human Development Index, ranking 91 out of 187 countries.

In recent years, Mauritania has enjoyed political stability, with the June 2014 presidential elections taking place peacefully. In addition, the country registered a robust growth rate of 6.7 per cent in 2013 and continues to be characterized by macroeconomic stability. The country, however, remains exposed to vulnerabilities related to lack of diversification, international price volatility and reliance on foreign inflows. While it has succeeded in increasing per capita income in recent years, income distribution has remained relatively unchanged for the last two decades, and the challenges of unemployment remain daunting. Sound management of natural resources is essential to foster inclusive and long-term growth. 

​Indonesia is the largest economy in South-East Asia and has developed rapidly over the past decade into a competitive and decentralized electoral democracy with a fast growing middle class. Despite the country's positive progress in reducing poverty, vulnerability and inequality remain high. Nearly 40 per cent of Indonesians are highly vulnerable to shocks, which can push them back below the poverty line. 

Since its founding, IFAD has focused on enabling smallholder farmers to increase agricultural production and productivity as a means for reducing poverty.

However, experience shows that increased productivity and incomes do not automatically translate into improved nutritional status of poor rural people, especially women, young people and children. 

This note presents lessons learned on integrated homestead food production (IHFP) emerging from projects and programmes implemented by IFAD and other development actors around the world. It aims to complement the How To Do Note (HTDN) on the same subject by illustrating success stories and good practices through case studies.

Integrated homestead food production (IHFP) is considered to be a nutrition-sensitive, pro-poor and women-controlled approach to household food production that includes vegetable and fruit gardens, backyard livestock-raising and small fish ponds. It can enhance poor rural people’s access to a variety of nutritious fresh foods, grown in close proximity to their households and requiring relatively limited human, financial and productive resources. The how to do note provides operational guidance on how to design and implement projects that incorporate IHFP.

Fisheries and aquaculture are important contributors to food security and livelihoods at household, local, national and global levels. However, while aquaculture production is growing rapidly throughout the world, particularly in Asia and Africa, many of the world’s fisheries are at grave risk from human pressures, including overexploitation, pollution and habitat change. Climate change is compounding these pressures, posing very serious challenges and limiting livelihood opportunities.

Participatory Impact Assessment and Learning Approach (PIALA)

 

توضّح دراسة الحالة كيف تم استخدام نموذج الحیاة الأسریة في أوغندا، مع تسلیط الضوء على أداء كل منهجیة في سیاقها المحدد.  

توفّر دلیلاً مفصّلاً حول كیفیة تطبیق المنهجیات الأسریة. وتتضمن وصفاً للأنشطة على المستوى الأسري، والنهج المختلفة في تطبیق المنهجیات الأسریة، وموفّري الخدمات، ونظام المیسّرین، بالإضافة إلى دور المجتمع المحلي والبیئة الأشمل. وتوضّح النقاط الأساسیة الواجب أخذها بعین الاعتبار عند إدماج المنهجیات الأسریة في تصمیم المشروعات وتنفیذها.

​This HTDN is directed primarily at the design phase of IFAD value chain projects, though it does have some relevance for both pre-design and implementation phases.

This How To Do Note is intended as a tool for IFAD staff and partners involved in investment projects with climate resilience objectives.

Access to modern renewable energy services is a key factor in eradicating poverty and ensuring food security.

With the mounting awareness of the unmet demand for youth financial services and the growing evidence that serving young people is viable, there is also a need to assess and document the implications for rural areas. This toolkit on Youth Access to Rural Finance aims to contribute to filling that gap.
The Lessons Learned and How To Do Note on this topic provide IFAD country programme managers, project design teams and implementing partners with insights and key guidance on designing and offering appropriate financial services for rural youth. The toolkit on Youth Access to Rural Finance synthesizes best practices and offers examples from around the world.  

Although there have been improvements in YFS access, youth are still lagging significantly behind adults in being able to access financial tools. Across high- and low-income countries, young people are less likely than adults to have a formal account. There are even starker differences related to a country’s income level, with 21 per cent of youth in low-income economies having a formal account compared with 61 per cent in upper-middle-income economies (Demirguc-Kunt et al., 2013). 

Even with this data, determining the exact extent of youth access to financial services can be complicated because there is a lack of consistent data and definitions on youth (see Box 3). The lack of data is more limited for rural areas.
While there is some analysis of the urban-rural gap in access to financial services, with those living in cities significantly more likely to have an account than rural residents (Klapper, 2012), there are currently no comprehensive studies with disaggregated data for rural youth.

In 1977, IFAD made improving “the nutritional level of the poorest populations in developing countries” one of the principal objectives of its founding agreement. Since then, governments, civil society and development organizations also have come to recognize the central importance of nutrition – which comprises undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and overweight – to development.

 

يعتبر الماء ذو أهمية أساسية للتنمية البشرية والبيئة والاقتصاد. الوصول إلى الماء والأمن المائي أمر بالغ الأهمية لتحسين الأمن الغذائي ودخل وسبل عيش المجتمعات الريفية. لا يزال الوصول الموثوق إلى المياه يشكل عقبة رئيسية أمام ملايين المزارعين الفقراء، معظمهم من المزارعين في المناطق البعلية، ولكن أيضًا المشاركين في الزراعة المروية. يشكل تغير المناخ وأنماط هطول الأمطار المتغيرة الناتجة تهديدًا لكثير من المزارعين، الذين يخاطرون بفقدان الأمن المائي والانزلاق مرة أخرى إلى مصيدة الفقر.وبالتالي فمن الضروري تعزيز قدرة المجتمعات على تبني ونشر تقنيات إدارة المياه الزراعية. 

IFAD has achieved significant results in promoting innovative gender mainstreaming and pro-poor approaches and processes in its operations, making this an area of IFAD’s comparative advantage. 

In 2013, IFAD commissioned a study to analyse project management arrangements for market‑oriented smallholder agriculture. As IFAD adapts to the changing development discourse, the organization has focused increasingly on improving Project Management Unit (PMU) arrangements in order to provide more effective and expanded management and technical skills. This review was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of PMUs and their alignment with the Paris Declaration principles, as well as to identify lessons or frameworks to guide future project management and implementation arrangements. It investigated five case studies drawn from different regions and types of projects.  

Equitable access to land and tenure security for IFAD’s target groups are essential for rural development and poverty eradication. Tenure security influences the extent to which farmers are prepared to invest in improvements in production and land management. 

Interventions to be scaled-up are in this note are: (i) Recognition and recording of multiple and sometimes overlapping rights in community-level land use, watershed management, territorial, rangeland and forest management planning processes; (ii) Registration of land ownership and use rights; (iii) Equitable land access; (iv) Land conflict resolution and access to judiciary and legal aid and; (v) Civic education and public awareness-raising. 

Smallholder livestock production is largely based on family farming and is key to poor rural people’s livelihoods, food security and employment creation. 

With almost four decades of engagement in more than 70 countries and more than US$1.1 billion invested in rural finance (RF) initiatives, IFAD has rich and multifaceted experience, a global network of partners working at the frontier of innovation and hundreds of different types of providers addressing the financial needs of poor rural households as their clients. Most of the 3 billion people in rural areas still live on less than US$2 a day. Challenges such as economic shocks, food shortages and climate change affect poor people disproportionately. Poor rural households are typically excluded from opportunities in the formal financial sector.

Smallholder farmers are in the front line of climate change impacts. The ecosystems on which they rely are increasingly degraded and their access to suitable agricultural land and to forest resources is declining.

The initial step in scaling up smallholder organizations is to clarify and examine the elements that work best and decide which of these to scale up. The elements to be considered include the organizational components embedded in projects related to capacity-building, such as the managerial and technical skills and governance systems that enable organizations to fulfil their core functions and achieve their missions more effectively.

Taller regional de América Latina y el Caribe en preparación de la segunda reunión mundial del Foro de Pueblos Indígenas en el FIDA.

Africa Regional Workshop in preparation for the Second Global Meeting of the Indigenous Peoples’ Forum at IFAD.

توضّح دراسة الحالة كيف تم استخدام  مؤتمر الرجال حول نار المخیّم في زامبيا. مع تسلیط الضوء على أداء كل منهجیة في سیاقها المحدد. الروابط متوفر للمصادر والمحتويات الالكترونية.

توضّح دراسة الحالة كيف تم استخدام  النهج الأسري في تعمیم قضایا التمایز بین الجنسین، ومكافحة فیروس نقص المناعة البشریة ومتلازمة نقص المناعة المكتسب، بفعالية في اثيوبيا مع تسلیط الضوء على أداء كل منهجیة في سیاقها المحدد. الروابط متوفر للمصادر والمحتويات الالكترونية

This note highlights the lessons learned in supporting smallholder institutions and organizations. 

The Twa “Pygmy” of the Republic of Burundi are a small minority of around 80,000 people that self-identify as indigenous and are considered as such by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the UN system. 

This How To Do Note guides design and country teams in conducting an initial analysis of organizations and their capacity development needs at the project design stage. It provides a conceptual framework and practical suggestions and tools to help practitioners systematically collate and summarize information captured during design missions. 

In February 2013, the First Global Meeting of the Indigenous Peoples Forum took place at the IFAD headquarters in Rome, in conjunction with the 36th session of the Governing Council. In attendance at this inaugural meeting were 31 indigenous people’s representatives from 25 countries in Asia, Pacific, Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean regions. Of the 19 Asia- Pacific regional representatives, two were from the Pacific; Mr. Anthony Wale, the Executive Director Aoke Langalanga Constituency Apex Association (ALCAA), and Ms Rufina Peter, Senior Research Officer at the PNG Institute of National Affairs.

During the meeting the Pacific representatives highlighted the need for the Pacific to have a “separate identity” as per the outcomes of Asia Pacific regional preparatory workshop in Bangkok. The issue was one of visibility for the Pacific Region due to its unique, rich and diverse cultures and traditions, its significant land and sea area and its high biodiversity. The Pacific Regional meeting proposed three action plans, of which the Pacific Regional Workshop in preparation of the Second Global Meeting of the Indigenous Peoples’ Forum at IFAD is a direct result.

توضّح دراسة الحالة كيف ساهم الزعماء والقادة التقلیدیون في زامبیا، مع تسلیط الضوء على العمل في سیاقها المحدد. الروابط متوفر للمصادر والمحتويات الالكترونية

توضّح دراسة الحالة كيف تم استخدام دراسة حالة النهج الأسري في زامبیا. مع تسلیط الضوء على أداء كل منهجیة في سیاقها المحدد.

The purpose of this Guide is to support institutional and organizational analysis and strengthening (IOA/S) for design and implementation of programmes and projects.
The Guide is designed to be a practical, hands-on set of directions to those needing to answer the following questions: “how to go about doing institutional and organizational analysis? And once I’ve done it, how do I go about using this analysis to promote sustainable institutions and organizations?”

This is intended as a user-friendly Guide, the use of which could help identify strategic partners and key areas for intervention at COSOP level; to deepen the COSOP analysis at the design stage by generating interventions that support sustainable institutions and organizations, and progress
at implementation stage should be easier to monitor and evaluate effectively. 

The “Strengthening smallholder institutions and organizations toolkit” provides valuable guidance to help practitioners analyze and address issues related to smallholder institutions and organizations during the devopment of country strategies and in the design and implementation of programmes and projects.

Natural resources (land, water, forests, fisheries) are fundamental to the survival of rural people. The livelihoods of most poor people depend on agriculture, which in turn hinges on the continued productiveness of the land and availability of water resources. Land and water, in addition to forests, offer the compendium of ecological goods and services that smallholders in developing countries need for their economic development; they can also provide a safety net in times of crisis. These resources are also global public goods. Natural resources need to be managed sustainably not only on smallholder farms and in individual sectors (e.g. selected sources of water or forest reserves) but in the totality of ecosystems that support their existence.

The indigenous population of the Republic of Congo (RC) include the Baka, Mbendjele, Mikaya, Luma, Gyeli, Twa and Babongo peoples. Depending on sources, these peoples represent a small minority of 1.25 to 10 percent of RC’s estimated population of 4.4 million, primarily of Bantu origin.

The purpose of this Lessons Learned note is to provide design teams with observations based on lessons from IFAD and other donors’ projects that may help in the design of value chain projects.

The LOC is a loan to a participating financial institution (PFI) for on-lending to customers who are expected to repay their loans with interest.

توضّح دراسة الحالة كيف تم استخدام المنھجیة الأسریة التحولیة، بفعالية في اثيوبيا مع تسلیط الضوء على أداء كل منهجیة في سیاقها المحدد. الروابط متوفر للمصادر والمحتويات الالكترونية.

توضّح دراسة الحالة كيف تم استخدام المؤتمر المتنقل للرجال بقعالية في كينيا، مع تسلیط الضوء على أداء كل منهجیة في سیاقها المحدد.  
 

This document highlights IFAD’s and other partners’ experiences with products, services, methods and approaches associated with Loan Guarantee Funds. It will assist IFAD’s country programme manager (CPM) to take up evidence-based good practices that can aid IFAD’s thematic focus.

This How To Do Note highlights the rationale for using Loan Guarantee Funds, focusing on different types of guarantee arrangements, as well as their strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. It also summarizes global experience with LGFs.

The Note provides country programme management teams, programme design teams, implementation teams, and other practitioners and users with evidence-based good practices and guidelines so that they can design and implement more effective and contextually appropriate guarantees. 

Community-based financial organizations (CBFOs) are often the only institutions available to provide basic financial services to the rural poor, especially in remote areas with inadequate infrastructure.

CBFOs can be organized in many different ways. This knowledge document elaborates on the lessons learned in designing and implementing support for a CBFO.

This how to do note addresses KPIs and PBAs at the level of partnering financial institutions. In this context, key performance targets are included in various documents, including strategic plans, business plans and possibly budgets at different levels. 

Also, they can be used as an important support instrument for results-based management.

This How To Do Note highlights the philosophy and rationale for LOCs, focusing on different types of LOC arrangements, as well as their strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. It summarizes global experience with LOCs in order to clearly outline when they should and should not be used. It presents practical aspects of specific approaches, methodologies and models that have been tested and can be recommended for
implementation and scaling up. 

This Lessons Learned note provides practical suggestions and guidelines to CPMs and the country programme management to help them design and implement programmes and projects. 

The purpose of this guidance is to provide CPMTs with some observations based on lessons learned from IFAD and other donors’ projects, as well as from the World Bank Operations Evaluation Department (OED 2006) LOC review that may help in the design of LOCs. 

This How To Do Note helps design teams to improve their understanding of different types of community-based financial organizations and the support structures they need to best serve remote poor rural communities.

This note provides an overview on Loan Guarantee Funds highlighting the main issues, challenges, opportunities and benefits.

This note provides an overview on IFAD's support to community-based financial organizations highlighting the main issues, challenges, opportunities and benefits.

This note provides an overview on key performance indicators and performance-based agreements highlighting the main issues, challenges, opportunities and benefits.

This case study illustrates how Household Mentoring has been used effectively in Uganda, highlighting how it has worked in a particular context. Links are provided to resources and online materials.

تتألف مجموعة الأدوات المخصصة للمنهجیات الأسریة من ثلاثة أقسام.

Strong links to markets for poor rural producers are essential to increasing agricultural income, generating economic growth in rural areas and reducing hunger and poverty. Every product that is sold locally, nationally or internationally is often part of an agricultural value chain (VC). From a development perspective, VCs are one of the instruments through which market forces can be harnessed to benefit poor rural women and men – not just producers, but wage earners, service providers and others.

This How To Do Note provides a description of the participatory land-use planning (PLUP) methodology with the steps that should be followed to implement it in IFAD interventions with some practical examples of how this has been done. 

This How To Do Note provides guidance on how to carry out a land assessment at the project design stage.

Through this assessment, it will be possible to identify key land tenure issues in the project area and to indicate how they can be resolved through project activities and interventions.

This How To Do Note provides guidance on how to carry out a land assessment at the RB-COSOP stage to provide indications on key land tenure issues that the country (or area of interest) is facing and how they could be strategically addressed to achieve the country’s strategic objectives. 

This note highlights lessons learned on pastoralism land rights and tenure aiming to inform the design and implementation of country strategies and projects from the point of view of land tenure issues faced by pastoralists.

It also provides examples of how IFAD has dealt with some of these issues through its programmes and projects.

The land tenure toolkit offers valuable guidelines to help practitioners analyze and address land tenure issues during the devopment of country strategies and in the design and implementation of programmes and projects.

IFAD has always adopted a proactive approach to the targeting of poor rural people of all ages in order to reduce the social and economic inequalities that help generate and perpetuate poverty.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) can be used in an IFAD-sponsored project to measure performance in a
regular and consistent manner. This note discusses the use of KPIs as well as the challenges associated with it. This discussion is followed by a review of the lessons learned by IFAD and other organizations, and concludes with strategic recommendations for follow-up.

تم إعداد منهجیة نظام تعلّم العمل في مجال التمایز بین الجنسین في إطار برنامج تعمیم وتشبیك تمكین المرأة التابع . لمؤسسة أوكسفام نوفیب في عام 2008 ، بالعمل مع شركاء محلیین وl  وقد اختبرت أوكسفام نوفيب مع شركائها استخدام هذه المنهجية في مجال تنمية سلاسل القيمة بفضل منحة صغيرة من الصندوق (2009- 2011). كما نشرت أوكسفام نوفیب هذه المنهجیة في نیجیریا، ورواندا، وأوغندا بالعمل مع شركاء محلیین،  وبالاستفادة من منحة كبيرة من الصندوق (2011-2014) وفي غیرها من البلدان بتمویل مشترك من جهات مانحة أخرى.

The objectives of this How To Do Note are to provide a practical introduction to basic concepts, identify key issues to be analysed at the design stage and provide references to the most relevant literature.

This note aims to inform the design and implementation of results-based country strategic opportunities programmes (RB-COSOPs) and projects by describing how youth are affected by insecurity of tenure and how such issues have been dealt with. It should be used at strategy, design and implementation stages.

The note explains the issues related to youth and land tenure and how they have been addressed in IFAD and other projects and programmes.

The objective of this Annual Progress Report is to review the activities of the Platform for Agricultural Risk Management (PARM) during its first year of life or, more precisely, thirteen months since its launch in December 2013.

MPAT was originally developed in China and India. In China, iterative testing was conducted in 2008 in order to refine and improve the draft Household and Village Surveys. After five rounds of testing in China and India, the project team felt that the surveys and indicators were sufficiently developed to warrant a large-scale pilot in both countries.

In China, the pilot was conducted in the context of an ongoing IFAD-supported project in Gansu Province in China’s arid north. The data from the pilots in China and India (see also Box 2 and Box 3) were then shared with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre so they could conduct an independent evaluation of MPAT. Results from a pilot village in China are presented, together with a photo of farmers planting seeds below.

The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool provides data that can inform all levels of decisionmaking by providing a clearer understanding of rural poverty at the household and village level. As a result, MPAT can significantly strengthen the planning, design, monitoring and evaluation of a project, and thereby contribute to rural poverty reduction.

Following an inclusive consultation and negotiation process, which involved more than 70 countries, international organizations, and representatives of the civil society and the private sector, the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGs) were officially endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security on 11 May 2012. The VGs set out principles, technical recommendations and practices for improving the governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests. They promote secure tenure rights and equitable access to these resources as a means of eradicating hunger and poverty, supporting sustainable development and protecting the environment. They give recommendations to countries and to other key actors, who are strongly encouraged to adopt and use them on a voluntary basis.

La République du Niger a une population multi-ethnique, parmi laquelle, les Touareg, les Peulh et les Toubou s‘auto-identifient comme autochtones.

This technical note serves as a guide to the design of appropriate programme interventions that apply value chain financing approaches to the development of competitive agricultural value chains. 

It emphasizes interventions that promote financial inclusiveness and the overall development goals of governments, as well as those of technical and funding agencies.

This document is intended to aid delivery channels, microfinance providers in particular, in working with insurance companies to develop successful microinsurance products for the low-income market. 

A systematic new-product development process is crucial to the success of microinsurance products for many reasons, including: Saving money – by maximizing the potential for product success; Saving management and staff time – by ensuring, within reason, that the product has market demand, and by working out staff and systems issues early in the process, when it is easier and cheaper to make changes; Generating goodwill in one’s market – by offering products that will not have to be withdrawn or substantially altered once they are offered throughout the market. The process outlined in this manual will help microinsurance developers create successful microinsurance products. ‘Success’ means meeting the needs of the three major parties in the microinsurance relationship: low-income policyholders, the insurer and delivery channels.

This manual is intended as an aid to microinsurance institutions. It presents a technique called ‘process mapping’ that can support institutions in self-analysis by assisting them in understanding, developing and improving business processes. Although the concepts presented may be used for many types of projects and processes, this manual was specifically developed as a supplement to Microinsurance product development for microfinance providers (McCord 2012).

The manual describes how a process map can be drawn, analysed and adapted for the microinsurance sector. It offers practical guidance about which processes to concentrate on, and guides the reader through the task of improving these processes, first on paper and then in practice. For more information please click on the link below.

This technical note aims to help project designers and reviewers of the design process to decide whether matching grants are the most appropriate financing instrument in a given context and what to consider when designing a matching grant component. The note focuses on use of these grants to finance productive assets and investments for business purposes. For more information please click on the lonk below.

The United Republic of Tanzania (URT) has a multi-ethnic population with more than 125 different ethnic communities. Four of these—the Hadzabe, the Akie, the Maasai and the Barabaig—identify themselves as indigenous peoples. 

The Republic of Kenya has a multi-ethnic population, among which more than 25 communities identify as indigenous.

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

Poor rural people in developing countries are vulnerable to a range of risks and constraints that impede their socio-economic development. Weather risk, in particular, is pervasive in agriculture. 

G20 leaders, meeting at their Seoul Summit in November 2010, requested FAO, IFAD, IMF, OECD, UNCTAD, WFP, the World Bank and the WTO to work with key stakeholders “to develop options for G20 consideration on how to better mitigate and manage the risks associated with the price volatility of food and other agriculture commodities, without distorting market behaviour, ultimately to protect the most vulnerable.” This mandate was part of a comprehensive Multi-Year Action Plan for Development, of which food security was one theme among several including infrastructure, human resource development, trade, private investment and job creation, and growth with resilience.

The objective of IFAD Decision Tools for Rural Finance is to provide decision-making support for the IFAD country programme managers (CPMs), consultants, project staff and technical advisers who develop and implement rural finance projects. Built on the IFAD Rural Finance Policy (RFP) (IFAD 2009), as well as other good practice guides, this knowledge management tool is designed to help identify and answer the questions that arise in each rural finance project, provide background on key issues, define common terms, highlight risks and opportunities, and provide references for further investigation. 

Risk is inherent in agriculture. Farmers face a variety of market and production risks that make their incomes unstable and unpredictable from year to year.

Guidance notes for institutional analysis in rural development programmes provides a synthesis of the training materials developed as part of the Institutional Analysis (IA) methodology. They propose that we rethink how we conceptualize and promote institutional change, particularly for pro-poor service delivery. 

They provide a framework and the analytical tools for designing programmes and projects that feature implementation modalities based on some of the core principles of good governance, focusing on “pro-poor governance” and systemic sustainability at the micro and meso levels.

As part of its obligations undertaken to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, IFAD committed itself to enabling the rural poor to help themselves out of poverty by increasing theirorganizational capacity to influence institutions of relevance to rural poverty reduction (policies, laws and regulations).

As a result, IFAD has embarked upon a process to strengthen its own organizational competencies in institutional analysis and dialogue.
This sourcebook is an attempt to complement and further this process. It has been written keeping in mind the needs of country programme managers, as well as consultants working with IFAD.