IFAD's History
IFAD has been investing in rural people and empowering them to improve their food security and nutrition since 1977.
Three in four of the world's poorest people live in the rural areas of developing countries. Most of them depend on agriculture for their livelihoods – and in turn, produce much of the food we eat. It’s not an easy job.
Many rural people living in poverty face massive economic, social and environmental challenges – from climate change and food insecurity, to inequality, conflict and lack of access to resources.
These overlapping problems cannot be solved working alone. As an assembler of development finance, we partner with governments, the private sector, civil society and others to provide grants and concessional and low-interest loans to developing countries. This helps to address critical needs and support rural people as they lead their own development.
IFAD-supported projects promote prosperity, food security and resilience by connecting rural poor people to the finance, markets, technology and knowledge they need to address their biggest challenges.
We catalyse public and private investments, advocate for policies that empower rural people and their institutions, and promote innovation in order to achieve lasting, systemic change for rural communities in every region of the world.
Throughout our work, we emphasize the importance of inclusion and equity, focusing special attention on gender and groups that are often overlooked, like youth, Indigenous Peoples and persons with disabilities. We strive to foster an organizational culture built around these values.
Furthermore, as a results-driven organization, we conduct rigorous monitoring and evaluation to assess our impact and scale up what we know works. That’s one of the reasons we are a top-rated development organization.
IFAD is the only UN agency exclusively dedicated to transforming agriculture, rural economies and food systems. We invest in the millions of people who are most at risk of being left behind: poor, small-scale food producers living in rural areas.
We support rural people in some of the most remote and fragile contexts so that they can:
Produce and sell more
Eat more nutritious foods
Manage natural resources well
Earn more money
Access new technologies
Adapt to climate change
Build resilience to economic shocks, conflict and other crises
Through our investments, we help ensure that rural people lead their own change.
We periodically update our strategic framework to align our objectives with the evolving global context.
Adopted in 2016, IFAD’s Strategic Framework guides how we will progress toward our vision through 2025. It articulates our contribution to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and outlines how we will work in ways that are bigger, better and smarter.
Bigger, by mobilizing and leveraging greater investment in rural areas.
Better, by strengthening the quality of rural development programmes.
Smarter, by sharpening our efficiency and delivering results in a more cost-effective way.