COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted food systems and the livelihoods of farmers. IFAD built rural resilience during this global crisis.
Rural Poor Stimulus Facility - IFAD
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Rural Poor Stimulus Facility
© IFAD/Ibrahima Kebe Diallo
Assessing and managing agricultural risks in developing countries
The COVID-19 pandemic had enduring consequences for the well-being, livelihoods and food security of poor rural people.
The pandemic significantly dented global progress on reducing rural poverty (SDG1) and aggravated already declining food security (SDG2).
COVID-19 posed considerable risks to rural people, who were often particularly vulnerable to its effects – in terms of both the spread of the virus and its economic and social consequences. This was especially true for rural people living in fragile contexts.
Given the magnitude of the challenge presented by this crisis, in April 2020 IFAD launched a multi-donor COVID-19 Rural Poor Stimulus Facility (RPSF). This initiative aligned with the UN socio-economic response framework and complemented IFAD’s broader COVID-19 response efforts. It sought to improve the resilience of rural livelihoods in the context of the crisis by ensuring timely access to inputs, information, markets and liquidity.
The Facility leveraged the UN Secretary-General’s Response and Recovery Fund and the work of other multilateral partners to achieve food security for the millions of poor rural people in the most remote and vulnerable communities.
The RPSF was a short-term strategy that fed into IFAD’s longer-term development objectives. IFAD initiated the Facility with US$40 million of seed funding from grant resources and mobilized a further US$53 million from Member States to scale up support. Contributions to the facility include CAD 6 million from the Government of Canada, EUR 27 million from the Government of Germany, EUR 6 million from the Government of the Netherlands, SEK 50 million from the Government of Sweden, and CHF 2 million from the Government of Switzerland. All funds were disbursed by 2022 as an immediate COVID-19 response.
The Rural Poor Stimulus Facility aimed to improve the food security and resilience of rural people in poverty by supporting production, market access and employment.
The ultimate goal of the RPSF was to accelerate the recovery of poor and vulnerable rural people from the COVID-19 crisis. This was achieved by ensuring IFAD’s target group had the capacity, assets and overall resilience to cope with shocks; through lessons that are incorporated into IFAD’s work from the implementation and innovations of the RPSF; and through a strengthened capacity to deliver digital support.
Interventions financed by the facility fell into four categories:
Providing inputs and basic assets for production of crops, livestock and fisheries
Facilitating access to markets to support small-scale farmers in selling their products in conditions where market functions are restricted
Targeting funds for rural financial services to ensure sufficient liquidity and to ease repayment requirements so as to maintain services, markets and jobs
Promoting the use of digital services to deliver key information on production, weather, finance and market
All IFAD-supported country programmes that were at risk of not achieving their development outcomes due to COVID-19 were eligible to receive funding from the RPSF.
Through the Facility, 85 per cent of funds were used to support 59 of the most at-risk countries with country-level financing, and 15 per cent supported particularly innovative or strategic regional initiatives.
For the country-level financing, IFAD identified eligible countries based on a widely used COVID-19 risk index, along with relevant indicators on rural poverty.
Activities financed under the Facility were implemented through existing IFAD projects and programmes, as well as through non-state actors – farmers’ organizations, NGOs and private sector players already engaged in supporting IFAD – wherever they added value to the response.
Over the course of its operation, the RPSF reached more than 20 million of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. It now provides a valuable model for the kind of support communities need to weather catastrophes and quickly start rebuilding secure food and hygiene systems for the medium and longer term.
Experts
Ashley Davidson
Programme Officer, Rural Poor Stimulus Facility
[email protected]