Recursos

This brief shares the results and lessons learned from the first phase of the Insurance for Rural Resilience and Economic Development (INSURED) programme.

IFAD’s INSURED programme has been working with partners in Indonesia to improve the availability of climate risk insurance that enables farmers to strengthen their resilience. 

INSURED es un programa de asistencia técnica que trabaja para fortalecer el seguro agrícola en la cartera del FIDA. 

La rápida inflación de 2022 agravó los problemas de financiación a los que se enfrentan las empresas situadas en la parte intermedia de las cadenas de valor agrícolas.

Este informe examina el universo de proveedores de agritech y fintech que influyen en el acceso a la financiación en África Oriental y Meridional, explorando su potencial para ser comercialmente viables y alcanzar escala.

This paper focuses primarily on climate resilience in the agriculture sector. If proven successful, this can be replicated in other resilience sectors such as water, forests and urban development to address shocks beyond climate. 

This briefing note summarizes the fiscal and financial instruments the public sector can use to support climate-smart small-scale farming. The overall focus is on using limited public funds more efficiently and amplifying impacts.

IFAD's unique investing position serves as a starting point for a discussion on how it might scale up and support gender-based responses for adaptation and mitigation to climate change.

Climate and conflict are linked, and this briefing note summarizes the evidence about the relationship between the two, what role climate finance can play in mitigating their risks, and where policy recommendations can be made to address the vulnerabilities created by both.

En el marco del proyecto Gestión de Riesgos para el Desarrollo Rural: Promoción de Innovaciones en Microseguros, financiado por el FIDA, el Centro de Microseguros Milliman puso en marcha a título experimental una póliza de seguros para vacas lecheras en Georgia.

En esta nota de conocimientos se analizan los beneficios y la justificación de la colaboración comunitaria en las iniciativas de seguros basados en índices, y se aportan ejemplos de un proyecto piloto ejecutado en las zonas rurales de Etiopía.

Plataforma para las remesas, las inversiones y la capacidad empresarial de los migrantes en África

Comprender la demanda del mercado es un paso fundamental en el proceso de desarrollo de soluciones para satisfacer las necesidades de gestión de riesgos de la población rural pobre, especialmente en lo que respecta a los seguros.

Este documento es un resumen de las lecciones aprendidas de un proyecto sobre " La ampliación del acceso de los jóvenes rurales a los servicios financieros inclusivos para el emprendimiento y el empleo" en Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda y Burundi.

This report examines the factors that have contributed to the resilience of remittances during the pandemic.

This study takes stock of these experiences in an effort to contribute to building up the evidence base to help inform the future strategy and design of similar programmatic interventions.

El FIDA y Slow Food comparten la visión de apoyar mecanismos de producción y consumo a pequeña escala, diversificados y centrados en la mejora de la comercialización de los productos locales.

Lessons from a quick review of the diverse and varied financial schemes designed for, accessed by and used by poor smallholders and other rural stakeholders in IFAD’s project portfolio in West and Central Africa over the decade leading up to 2020.

Prototyping aims to gather direct feedback on the solution and the wider insurance scheme, incorporate changes before pilot testing, and make any additional adjustments before the official roll-out.

This Inclusive Financial Services (IFS) stocktaking exercise assesses IFAD’s capacity to deliver IFS and addresses rural poor market development needs both historically and looking forward within the context of emerging opportunities and challenges.

Este informe recopila las experiencias y lecciones compartidas en una serie de charlas en vivo sobre la gestión de riesgos para la financiación de las pymes agrícolas entre septiembre y diciembre de 2020.

El presente informe documenta los resultados logrados gracias al trabajo de todos los asociados de la red SAFIN.

What risks and challenges do small-scale producers of oilseeds in Uganda face, and could agricultural insurance help them manage and mitigate those risks?

This feasibility study explains the role of remittances in agricultural risk management.

En un mundo que cambia rápidamente, la agricultura está en el centro del desarrollo sostenible. En la década que queda para alcanzar los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible de las Naciones Unidas, el mundo se enfrenta a una serie de riesgos, pero también hay muchas oportunidades.

This case study examines a pilot initiative carried out by the IFAD-supported FIER project in Mali, together with the Babyloan crowdfunding platform, to leverage diaspora remittances abroad as a way to support rural entrepreneurship in the home country. 

The Agri-Business Capital Fund (ABC Fund) invests in smallholder farmers and rural small and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries to support sustainable and inclusive agricultural value chains. 

En este estudio se analiza la financiación inclusiva y a la juventud rural mediante una investigación de vanguardia con nuevas ideas y enfoques que han surgido a lo largo de los años en este campo.

This manual discusses the strategy, lessons learned and recommendations of Atikha in scaling up initiatives in mobilizing migrant resources towards agriculture development in the country. 

This study is an analysis of what drives cofinancing in IFAD-supported programmes/projects, covering 20 years of data from 559 projects in 109 countries.

Since 1979, IFAD has worked with the Government of Sudan to develop structural reforms that tackle the roots of poverty. IFAD has continued to support rural people in Sudan through investment projects focusing on sustainable resource management, value-chain development and support to farmer organizations. 

Niger covers a landlocked 1,267,000 km² tract of the Sahel north of Nigeria. With a poverty rate of 48.9 per cent and income per capita of US$420, Niger is one of the world’s poorest nations. In 2015, it ranked last among 188 countries measured by the United Nations Human Development Index

The Asia and the Pacific region includes the world’s fastest growing and most dynamic countries and is a key driver of growth in the world economy.

This programme, also known as FinServAccess, aimed to enhance access to sustainable rural financial services for smallholder producers and
agroentrepreneurs, so they are better equipped to face emerging challenges and benefit from new opportunities.

In the context of population growth, increasing inequality and natural resource depletion, universal access to energy – specifically to renewable energy (RE) – now has high importance on political agendas. 

Access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy is often associated with economic development and considered vital to alleviating extreme poverty (World Bank, 2018). Yet access to clean sources of energy is still a challenge for many smallholder farmers, their families and rural entrepreneurs.

The toolkit focuses on end-user finance for renewable energy technologies for rural households, smallholder farmers, and rural micro, small and medium enterprises.

This paper aims to identify the main drivers of poverty reduction in Malawi. Using an augmented poverty decomposition methodology, it explores in what way the different farm and non-farm economic activities contribute to poverty reduction and income growth. 

The Outreach Project was implemented in selected African countries (Gambia, Mozambique, and Tanzania) and aimed to improve the financia inclusion strategies of ongoing IFAD-funded operations by transferring and adapting innovative solutions, tools and methodologies previously tested in various countries of the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region.

​RemitSCOPE, a new website portal, is designed to provide data, analyses and remittancemarket1 profiles on individual countries or areas. In coordination with the Global Forum on Remittances, Investment and Development 2018, RemitSCOPE is being launched to provide market profiles for 50 countries or areas in the Asia and the Pacific region.

The additional four regions will be included gradually: Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, and Near East and the Caucasus. RemitSCOPE intends to address the fast-changing market realities in the remittance industry in order to help bring together the goals of remittance families, as clients, and the strategies of the private-sector service providers. RemitSCOPE is designed as a free, one-stop shop that is available to any organization or entity interested in accessing all relevant public information on remittances.  

The overall goal of the grant funding was to strengthen the capacity of development practitioners in developing countries to identify, design and
implement more effective interventions aimed at increasing access to rural and agricultural finance.

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) can be a useful tool to measure the empowerment, agency and inclusion of women in the agriculture sector. However, computing the WEAI in its current form involves large data requirements, resulting in lengthy surveys with several questions on various dimensions and indicators within each dimension. This paper proposes a reduced version of the WEAI, or the R-WEAI, and examines two possible approaches to reduce the data requirements while ensuring comparability to the full WEAI.

Cash transfer and agricultural support programmes are both used to improve nutrition outcomes in developing countries. This paper examines previous reviews of the impact of these programmes and compares the evidence between the two. The paper finds that, although there are about the same number of programmes of each type, many more papers have been written about the cash transfer programmes than the agricultural programmes. While evidence suggests that both programme types improved the quality of food consumption, the paper concludes that both types show weak evidence of improvements in anthropometric outcomes.

De los 450 000 millones de dólares estadounidenses que los trabajadores migrantes cada año envían a casa en los países en desarrollo, entre el 30% y el 40% se destina
a las zonas rurales. En el punto de partida de la cadena de la migración, las personas abandonan las zonas rurales para buscar oportunidades en otros lugares, ya que
carecen de ellas más cerca de su hogar. Las instituciones de microfinanciación (IMF) son insustituibles a la hora de atender las necesidades de los receptores de remesas
y reinvertir los fondos excedentes para mejorar las oportunidades de las comunidades locales.

Durante los dos últimos decenios, la cooperación Sur-Sur ha ido ganando reconocimiento en cuanto marco general para la colaboración entre países en desarrollo (países del Sur Global) en una serie de ámbitos de índole política, económica, social, cultural, ambiental y técnica.

Index insurance has a role to play in agricultural development and risk management, yet it faces operational and technical challenges to reach scale and sustainability. Data are a key challenge and were the focus of the project “Improving Agricultural Risk Management in Sub-Saharan Africa: Remote Sensing for Index Insurance”. Limited availability, accessibility, quantity and poor quality of data on the ground are some of the primary technical constraints preventing scale-up and sustainability of index insurance. Without sufficient quality data, either it is impossible to design products for some areas and countries, or products that are designed can become unreliable, not compensating when they should. These inconsistencies intensify vulnerability, lead to distrust of insurance, and ultimately have an impact on demand. This publication details the project, which investigated overcoming issues with ground data by using remote sensing data for index insurance. It describes the different remote sensing options and opportunities available for index insurance, but it also recommends further investment in research and development, supplementary ground data and capacity-building going forward. 

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) were both created in response to the food crises of the 1970s. We have worked together for more than 20 years to catalyze agricultural and rural development and improve food security in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

IFAD and IFPRI have strengthened the productivity and resilience of smallholder farmers and other rural people, with a particular focus on helping expand their access to innovative local farming methods, climate change mitigation and adaptation technologies and financing, and more profitable markets.

To further promote rural development and transformation, IFAD and IFPRI have built cutting-edge information systems and tools that deliver sound data and analyses to governments, donors, farmer organizations, and other stakeholders. As a result, the two organizations have fostered evidence-based policy making and investments that promote agricultural growth and rural development.

En este informe se aportan datos y análisis relativos a la evolución de las remesas y la migración en los países en desarrollo durante el último decenio, además de la posible contribución de las familias que hacen uso de remesas al cumplimiento de los ODS de aquí a 2030.

Con motivo del Día Internacional de las Remesas Familiares,los días 15 y 16 de junio de 2017, se reunieron más de 350 especialistas de los sectores público y privado en la Sede de las Naciones Unidas en Nueva York para el quinto Foro Mundial sobre Remesas, Inversión y Desarrollo2. Los participantes tuvieron la ocasión de debatir sobre los desafíos y oportunidades en el mercado de las remesas, presentar enfoques innovadores y modelos empresariales eficaces. Los debates se estructuraron en torno a la importancia de las remesas y la inversión de los migrantes para lograr los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS) de ahora a 2030.

The programme, referred to as the Strengthening Rural Institutions (SRI) project, was implemented by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) Eastern and Southern Africa Region from 2011 to 2014. The project aimed to bring about a sustainable rural transformation process by strengthening the “institutional infrastructure” for integrated natural resource management, food security and poverty alleviation in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. 

The project’s main goal was to support grassroots organizations to meaningfully participate in governance processes where their livelihoods and well-being, and the environment, are at stake, with an emphasis on enabling poor rural households to aggregate, mobilize and access rural services.

This paper provides an overview of concepts, issues and research on the relationship between financial inclusion and inclusive rural transformation.

It demonstrates how changing demand for financial services, innovations in rural finance, and different investment strategies affect the interplay of supply and demand.

This paper analyses how different types of social protection interventions affect rural livelihoods. It examines how these interventions can help rural transformation by increasing productivity and asks how they can influence inclusiveness.

Using country-level evidence, it suggests that the effectiveness of social protection depends upon specific contexts and combinations of interventions, and asks what this means for building policy. 

During the period covered by the project, the landscape of global microfinance was deeply modified and “the game has changed”. On the one hand, the saturation of the market has led to over-indebtedness of very poor clients, scandals and systemic crises that have swept the whole sector in some prominent countries. On the other hand, it has been difficult for the industry to demonstrate tangible impact and, therefore, show that it has delivered against its promises of lifting hundreds of millions of very poor people out of poverty.

In this challenging context, the project aimed to help unlock the economic potential in sub-Saharan Africa, by promoting the growth of existing financial intermediaries that serve rural areas (rural financial institutions, RFIs) so that local entrepreneurs could take advantage of new opportunities to be more productive and more competitive, and improve their living conditions sustainably.

The purpose of this guide is to provide some generic steps and principles to be followed when setting up institutional arrangements for the management and implementation of IFAD projects.

The programme supported innovation funds working directly with communities to scale up approaches in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Uganda and Viet Nam.

La estrategia del FIDA en Nicaragua apoya las actividades de las organizaciones de agricultores y del Gobierno orientadas a impulsar el crecimiento inclusivo del sector agropecuario como medio para reducir la pobreza, generar empleo y mejorar el consumo de alimentos de las familias, además de contribuir a la sostenibilidad y la reproducción de las buenas prácticas. Los objetivos estratégicos se centran en los siguientes aspectos:
• La inclusión. Facilitar el acceso a los activos, los mercados y las actividades generadoras de ingresos, además de aumentar las oportunidades de empleo.
• La productividad. Incrementar la productividad de la mano de obra mediante incentivos que faciliten el acceso a la información, las tecnologías y los servicios técnicos y financieros.
• La sostenibilidad. Mejorar la sostenibilidad ambiental, fiscal e institucional.

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.

​With populations growing, fast emerging middle classes are demanding quality produce, luxury goods (tobacco, alcohol) and animal proteins, and there is pressure on domestic agricultural production to meet these needs. 

Sharing a vision: Partnership between the Netherlands and the International Fund for Agricultural Development A joint goal: Investing in rural people, contributing to global development Rural areas of poor countries are facing both new and continuing challenges. Among these are the world’s burgeoning population, volatile food prices, environmental degradation, climate change, diversion of farmland, declining public financing and inefficient production and trade chains. Food security and rural development, therefore, are among the top priorities of the Dutch development agenda and central to IFAD’s mandate. Over the coming decades, market oriented smallholder agriculture will be crucial to fulfilling the growing demand for food and related goods and services. It will also be fundamental to raising incomes of poor people, 70 per cent of whom live in rural areas, and protecting the environment. A shared desire to
support smallholder farmers in creating this future is at the heart of the partnership between the Netherlands and IFAD.

This paper challenges current thinking on the connection between rural transformation and food security & nutrition. It advocates that improving rural and structural transformation has a positive cyclical effect upon communities by improving food availability, access, supplies and utilization which in turn improves the health and education of communities. 

Using evidence from across the developing world, the paper creates a policy agenda to maximise potential for smallholder farming to transform local economies.

The purpose of this publication is to provide IFAD CPMs, MFIs, and all technical and financial partners with a methodological tool that will facilitate efficient implementation of the institutional transformation or regrouping processes of microfinance institutions, especially those that serve rural populations – processes that a priori are highly complex. 

Despite the progress made in the microfinance sector, its expansion has been hindered in large measure by institutional and financial impediments. This situation has led some institutions to embark on an institutionalization, institutional transformation, or regrouping process to overcome the obstacles in their path.

Microfinance institutions (MFI) take various forms these days, among them: projects, credit union or village banking networks, savings and credit cooperatives and mutual institutions, associations, capital companies, etc.

The 2016 Rural Development Report focuses on inclusive rural transformation as a central element of the global efforts to eliminate poverty and hunger, and build inclusive and sustainable societies for all. It analyses global, regional and national pathways of rural transformation, and suggests four categories into which most countries and regions fall, each with distinct objectives for rural development strategies to promote inclusive rural transformation: to adapt, to amplify, to accelerate, and a combination of them.

Most of the world’s 1.2 billion very poor people live in precarious conditions, without the security of reliable income, shelter or food. Being able to save, receive, pay or borrow small amounts of money can make a big difference to their lives.

Since the introduction of a comprehensive set of economic reforms known as Đôi Mói (renovation) in 1986, Viet Nam’s economy has sustained strong economic growth. Over the last 20 years, GDP growth has averaged 7.2 per cent per annum, resulting in rapid poverty reduction. 

Since initiating its first project in the country in 1980, IFAD has provided a total of US$116.2 million in financing through eight loans and three grants for programmes and projects with a total cost of US$251.9 million. The investment has benefited 513,500 households. Operations were suspended during the civil war and resumed after it ended in 2002.

At that time, IFAD and the African Development Bank established a joint programme coordination unit to facilitate the management and increase the cost-effectiveness of operations in agriculture and the rural sector.

El FIDA, prestando especial atención a las necesidades de grupos desfavorecidos tales como las mujeres, los jóvenes y los pueblos indígenas, fortalece las capacidades de las organizaciones rurales para ayudar a los pequeños agricultores a desarrollar negocios
rurales rentables, así como herramientas y estrategias que mejoran su capacidad de enfrentarse a los desafíos que plantea el cambio climático.

Para lograr este objetivo, el FIDA, en colaboración con el Gobierno de Bolivia, diseña programas cuyo objetivo es desarrollar las capacidades técnicas y de negocio de las organizaciones rurales. Estos programas aportan innovaciones tecnológicas que agregan valor a los productos agrícolas, mejorando su calidad y ayudando a los pequeños agricultores a ser más competitivos.

Además, las operaciones financiadas por el FIDA fomentan el desarrollo de empresas conjuntas público-privadas que ayudan a los pequeños productores a acceder a los mercados y a las cadenas de valor.

Remittances are the traditional means of financial support to family members back home.  This infographic illustrates the global flow of remittances.

Los últimos adelantos de la tecnología y las telecomunicaciones tienen el potencial de hacer que los servicios financieros sean más accesibles y asequibles para los hogares de los pequeños agricultores de las zonas rurales. Gracias a plataformas digitales como los teléfonos móviles, los pequeños productores pueden ahora utilizar los servicios financieros sin tener que acudir a una sucursal bancaria. 

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.

El objetivo del desarrollo no es crear riqueza por la riqueza misma, o para beneficio de unos pocos, sino construir sociedades mejores donde haya una mayor inclusión. Sentar las bases para que la gente prospere (o sobreviva después de un desastre) implica planificar e invertir, tanto en la esfera pública como privada.

Cada año los miembros de la diáspora mundial envían más de USD 450 000 millones en remesas a sus familias en países en desarrollo. Por medio de estas remesas, los miembros de la diáspora desempeñan un papel fundamental en el desarrollo de sus respectivos países de origen fomentando las inversiones, el turismo, el comercio, las actividades filantrópicas, la transferencia de conocimientos y las relaciones transfronterizas. Aunque se calcula que el volumen de remesas que se invierte en fines agrícolas en las zonas rurales es relativamente bajo (hasta un 5 por ciento del total), esta cantidad sigue siendo cuatro veces superior a la AOD que se destina a la agricultura.

This paper by Adinda Van Hemelrijck and Irene Guijt explores how impact evaluation can live up to standards broader  than statistical rigour in ways that address challenges of complexity and enable stakeholders to engage  meaningfully. A Participatory Impact Assessment and Learning.

Approach (PIALA) was piloted to assess and debate the impacts on rural poverty of two government programmes  in Vietnam and Ghana funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

This report proceeds from the Global Forum on Remittances and Development held in Milan, Italy in 2015.

IFAD has to report to its Members States on the total number of rural people lifted out of poverty1. The government programmes it funds, however, are implemented in complex ways and environments that challenge mainstream evaluation practice. The challenge for IFAD and its co- implementing and co-funding partners, moreover, is not just to rigorously assess impact but also to understand the processes generating impact in order to realize its ambitious targets (IFAD, 2011). Albeit a strong emphasis on quantitative measurement, there is a need for impact evaluation that fosters learning and responsibility.

This document presents the findings from the impact evaluation of the Root & Tuber Improvement and Marketing Program (RTIMP) in Ghana. The program was executed by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), Government of Ghana (GoG) from 2007 until end of 2014, and co-financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for a total amount of US$ 18.83 million.

The African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS) goal is to increase use of improved knowledge and technologies by agricultural value chain actors through efficient, effective and synergistic linkages and partnerships between Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services (AEAS) of member Countries to improve the delivery of these services to farmers.

The enabling rural transformation and grassroots institutional building for sustainable land management and increased incomes and food security, referred to as the Strengthening Rural Institutions (SRI) project was undertaken by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) Eastern and Southern Africa Region since 2011.

IFAD has acquired considerable experience during its three decades of partnership with the country. It has contributed directly and indirectly to the mobilization of resources aimed at removing structural obstacles to the development of rural poor people. This has been achieved through the active involvement of, and coordination with, family farmers, indigenous peoples, rural youth organizations, government, international cooperation agencies, civil society and, more recently, the private sector.

IFAD-funded projects mainly support family farmers and entrepreneurs in municipalities in which poverty is prevalent. Activities have also helped to address needs arising after the end of the 12-year internal armed conflict and the 2001 post-earthquake reconstruction process.

Today more people live in cities than ever before, but we still depend on  rural areas for our food. In the developing world, up to 80 per cent of food
is produced on small farms that are usually family-run. Yet it’s also true that 70 per cent of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas, where the lack
of opportunity is forcing many young rural people to leave their homes in search of work in overcrowded cities or abroad.

The Use of Remittances and Financial Inclusion A report prepared by the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Bank Group to the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion.

This report proceeds from the First African Conference on Remittances and Postal Networks held in Cape Town, South Africa 2015.

IFAD uses highly concessional loans in an innovative way in the Republic of Macedonia, the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Moldova. Low-cost refinancing capital makes rural investments attractive and profitable for formal financial institutions and reduces rural poverty by stimulating economic growth.

In the past seven years, IFAD has successfully used refinancing facilities in economies in transition to stimulate investments on farms and in rural processing companies. The facilities have refinanced projects for a total value of over US$50 million in the Republic of Moldova, the Republic of Macedonia and the Republic of Armenia, with an excellent recovery performance. Refinancing operations have proved to be a viable alternative to established modes of financing rural investments through lines of credit and microfinance. And they have encouraged financial institutions to expand their rural networks and start investing in agro-projects from their own funds. 

Despite strong and sustained economic growth over the past two decades, and a considerable reduction in national poverty rates, poverty in rural LaoPeople’s Democratic Republic (PDR) affects 30 per cent of the population. IFAD’s engagement in Lao PDR is guided by a country strategy that focuses on three primary goals: improved community-based access to, and management of, land and natural resources; improved access to advisory services and inputs for sustainable, adaptive and integrated farming systems; and improved access to markets for selected products.

Mexico is an upper-middle-income country with numerous policy initiatives aimed at addressing poverty and improving the well-being of both rural andurban populations. However, the country suffers from low productivity, low levels of GDP growth, and persistent poverty. Poverty is especially high in rural regions: in 2012, as much as 61 per cent of the rural population was categorized as poor (compared with 45 per cent of the total population) after little change over the past two decades.

Tajikistan is the poorest of the former Soviet republics, and 77 per cent of its population lives in rural areas. Rural livelihoods typically depend on subsistence farming, livestock and remittances, with livestock ownership being a key component in income generation and diversification. In poor and remote agroecological regions the production of angora (which is processed into mohair) and cashgora goats often represents the only source of livelihood, particularly for poorer households. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the sector has been constrained by the absence of goat breeding programmes, the limited harvesting and processing skills of small producers, and the lack of access to high-value markets. These factors have had direct impacts on the incomes of poor rural households, and particularly women, in Tajikistan.

Cooperatives play a significant role in the economies of the five countries of EAC. There are more than 30,000 registered cooperatives in the region and the movement employs – directly or indirectly – more than 15 million people. About half of these cooperatives are related to agriculture. Savings and credit cooperatives are also becoming increasingly popular in the region.

This publication is the result of a fruitful and close partnership between the Turkish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MFAL), both at state and provincial levels, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

The findings in this report are based on a series of studies and surveys commissioned by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and on analyses undertaken by IFAD on World Bank data. Financial contributions in support of the report were made by members of the IFAD-administered Financing Facility for Remittances, including the European Commission, the Government of Luxembourg, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and the United Nations Capital Development Fund. 

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.

Since its inception in December 2013, PARM has worked for a better management of risks in agriculture in developing countries, considered as a main constraint to improve farmers’ livelihoods. 

​IFAD’s mission is to invest in rural people, with the objective of overcoming poverty. Young people have increasingly become a priority target for IFAD as part of the agency’s fight against rural poverty (IFAD, 2014a).

IFAD recently resumed operations in Cuba after more than 20 years. The official launch of the Cooperative Rural Development Project in the Oriental Region (PRODECOR) took place on 30 October 2014.
Given the challenges the agricultural sector faces, IFAD is in a position to serve as one of the country’s strategic partners, contributing to the ongoing modernization process.
Cooperatives in Cuba are key actors in ensuring food security, as they represent 80 per cent of the country’s agricultural production. The Government of Cuba has expressed interest in re-establishing the partnership with IFAD with a view to modernizing agriculture.
This will be achieved mainly through developing non-state smallholder farmer business cooperatives. In this respect, IFAD is well placed to provide technical assistance through its projects to increase the physical, human, social and environmental assets of cooperatives.

In Jordan, the success of a project co-funded by IFAD largely rested on how quickly rural women were able to learn about borrowing money and setting up and running their own small enterprises.

Somalia’s poverty and food security situation remains critical after years of conflict and natural disasters. Since the 1980s, IFAD has supported nine programmes in the country for a total of US$140 million.
There is currently no country strategic opportunities programme for Somalia.

However, the strategic objectives of IFAD interventions in Somalia can be summarized as follows:
• Increase incomes and food security by supporting agriculture and related activities, improving access to water, sanitation and health care, strengthening the natural resource base and building rural financial services;
• Identify and promote pro-poor investment mechanisms in rural areas for dissemination, replication and scaling up; and
• Build the capacity of the diaspora and promote the transformation of people in the diaspora into agents of development through remittances – the portion of their earnings that migrants outside the country send home.

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.  

El FIDA, que hace más de cuatro decenios que lleva a cabo intervenciones relacionadas con los servicios financieros en las zonas rurales en más de 70 países y ya ha invertido USD 1 100 millones en iniciativas de ese tipo, tiene una gran y variada experiencia en esa esfera, una red mundial de asociados que trabajan en las innovaciones más avanzadas y cientos de proveedores distintos que atienden las necesidades financieras de los hogares pobres de las zonas rurales, que son sus clientes. Más de 3 000 millones de personas de las zonas rurales todavía viven con menos de USD 2 al día. Problemas como las crisis económicas, la carestía de alimentos y el cambio climático afectan a las personas pobres de una forma desproporcionada. Los hogares pobres de las zonas rurales suelen quedar excluidos de las posibilidades de operar en el sector financiero forma.

La ventaja comparativa del FIDA reside en su experiencia en el trabajo a nivel de base, su comprensión de los obstáculos que afronta la población pobre en las zonas rurales, en particular los más vulnerables, y su capacidad de concebir enfoques integradores para el desarrollo económico y social. Un elemento fundamental del enfoque de desarrollo del FIDA consiste en la prestación de apoyo a las organizaciones de pequeños agricultores en zonas rurales como estrategia para el empoderamiento de la población rural pobre. Las organizaciones de pequeños agricultores sólidas e integradoras con un nutrido grupo de miembros son importantes asociadas de gobiernos, organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG), donantes y agentes del sector privado que buscan nuevos mercados.

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

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. 

El cambio climático pone en peligro la base de
recursos naturales de la mayor parte del mundo en
desarrollo, acelera la degradación de los ecosistemas y
convierte la agricultura en una actividad más arriesgada.
En consecuencia, los pequeños agricultores, que
desempeñan una función sumamente decisiva en la
seguridad alimentaria mundial, se enfrentan a un clima
cada vez más extremo. Los pequeños agricultores se
ven afectados de una forma más directa por las sequías,
las inundaciones y las tormentas, a la vez que sufren
los efectos paulatinos del cambio climático, como el
estrés hídrico en los cultivos y la ganadería, la erosión
costera debida al aumento del nivel del mar y la
imprevisibilidad de las infestaciones de plagas.

Under the 9th  Replenishment, IFAD committed to moving 80 million rural people out of poverty cumulative from 2010 onwards to 2015, and conducting 30 rigorous impact assessments. Hence the urgent need for appropriate methodologies for impact assessment. To respond to this need, a few piloting initiatives have been launched, one of which is the Improved Learning Initiative (ILI) 2. This  initiative  aims  to  develop  a  potentially  scalable  Participatory  Impact  Assessment  and Learning Approach (PIALA) that can help IFAD and its partners collaboratively assess, explain and debate its contributions to rural poverty impact. The PIALA design and piloting is funded by IFAD’s DFID-financed Innovation Mainstreaming Initiative (IMI) and BMGF’s Measurement, Learning and Evaluation Unit in the Agricultural Development Program; and with important contributions from IFAD’s Country Program Offices and partners in the pilot countries (Vietnam and Ghana), and its Strategy & Knowledge Management and Program Management Departments.

This report proceeds from the Global Forum on Remittances held in Bangkok, Thailand in 2013.

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

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 note provides an overview on lines of credit illustrating the the key issues and the main challenges, opportunities and benefits.

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.

Matching grants (MGs) are used increasingly by multilateral and bilateral institutions, including the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Bank, to cofinance productive assets and investments. Although confined initially to investments with clear public good characteristics, their use has spread. They finance a broad array of assets and productivity-enhancing technologies for groups, companies and individuals, benefiting the private sector directly with clear private goods characteristics. MGs are used as a short-term financing instrument to promote diffusion of technologies and enable target groups to carry out productivity-enhancing investments, compensating for the limited availability and high costs of term finance. At times, MGs incorporate a “crowding in” mechanism to attract financiers by sharing the risks and increasing the effective collateral value of the asset being financed. They are also used to support innovations that, by their nature, are more risky and less likely to attract loan finance. Despite their appeal as a relatively simple instrument to address access to finance constraints in the short run, there are several risks, which can limit their effectiveness and impact. When poorly designed and poorly implemented, MGs can distort and crowd out private and public investments. 

Los resultados de los estudios señalan la importancia de la agricultura como actividad económica para la reproducción de estas unidades en todo el continente y demuestran que el conjunto de los agricultores familiares especializados es el grupo mayoritario en relación al total de las unidades productivas. Por otro lado, comprobamos que la función de residencia rural y la combinación de actividades y fuentes de ingresos es una característica importante que existe en todos los países estudiados, y que los ingresos y las actividades no agropecuarias de los agricultores familiares no son insignificativos, aunque son bajos.

This Focus Note introduces some recent developments in this rapidly changing space. The featured case studies (i) identify traditional pain points in serving smallholder farmers (such as the cost and risk of making payments to farmers and delivering subsidized credit), (ii) discuss how DFS are being used to overcome these pain points, and (iii) highlight some initial obstacles and successes.

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.