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Policy brief - Investing in rural livelihoods to eradicate poverty and create shared prosperity

June 2017
Investing in inclusive and sustainable rural transformation is strategically important for the 2030 Agenda. This has been broadly recognized in debates about the SDGs, particularly the roles of sustainable agriculture, food security and nutrition in relation to SDG2, the eradication of hunger. It is important to recognize that the eradication of hunger is inseparable from the eradication of poverty in all its forms (SDG1). While poverty is often the main driver of food insecurity and malnutrition, hunger and malnutrition also result in the inability to escape poverty. Investments targeted at rural people are needed not only to ensure no one is left behind, but also to unlock the catalytic role that inclusive rural transformation has been shown to play in reducing and eradicating poverty and hunger, as well as promoting wider prosperity.

Sending Money Home: Contributing to the SDGs, one family at a time

June 2017

This report provides data and analysis of remittances and migration trends for developing countries over the past decade, as well as the potential contributions of remittance families to reaching the SDGs by 2030.

Global Forum on Remittances, Investments and Development 2017 - agenda

June 2017
The Global Forum on Remittances, Investment and Development (GFRID) is part of a series of ground-breaking and inclusive international forums hosted by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations and an international financing institution (IFI), in collaboration with key development organizations and other IFIs. Over the last decade, these Forums have brought together stakeholders across all sectors and from around the world involved in the field of remittances, migration  and development.

Global Forum on Remittances, Investment and Development 2017 - Recommendations

June 2017

On 15 and 16 June 2017, on the occasion of the International Day of Family Remittances, over 350 practitioners from the public and private sectors gathered at the United Nations headquarters in New York for the fifth Global Forum on Remittances, Investment and Development (GFRID). The participants had the opportunity to discuss challenges and opportunities in the remittance market, and present innovative approaches and successful business models, framing the discussions around the role of migrants’ remittances and investment towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) by 2030.

Five years of the AAF’S technical assistance facility

June 2017

The Technical Assistance Facility (TAF) has a mandate to increase economic and physical access to food for low-income Africans by providing technical assistance to the portfolio companies of the African Agriculture Fund (AAF). 

The AAF is a private equity fund created in response to the food security challenge across the continent, financed by African, European and US development finance institutions, and private investors. It is comprised of two funds; the AAF and a subsidiary Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Fund. As TAF enters its fifth year, this report reflects on the progress of 42 projects implemented to date through technical assistance to ten AAF portfolio companies. 

Sustainable urbanization and inclusive rural transformation

June 2017
The participation of rural stakeholders is central to promoting inclusive, mutually beneficial and sustainable urbanization. Globally, most of the world’s poor and food-insecure people are still located in rural areas. Undernourishment continues to be concentrated among populations based in rural areas, although a growing number of poor people living in urban areas are affected. It is thus critical that rural people and their organizations participate in designing and implementing development policies and programmes that have an impact on rural-urban linkages − for example in food
security, territorial development, urban food planning, natural resource management or infrastructure.

Nutrition Mainstreaming in East and Southern Africa: Operational approaches

May 2017
Approaches and experiences in five countries from East and Southern Africa.

The JP RWEE pathway to women’s empowerment

April 2017

Gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls is a pre-condition for the eradication of poverty and essential to achieve progress across all goals and targets set by the Sustainable Development Agenda. The JP RWEE facilitates transformation through rural women’s leadership, making gender equality and women’s empowerment a reality. Support to women's economic empowerment allows for increased influence, education and information for women to decide the use of their income, savings and loans, and the ability to make decisions about their life. 

Glossary on gender issues

March 2017
This publication presents IFAD’s first glossary of terms related to gender issues.

Guide for Practitioners on ‘Institutional arrangements for effective project management and implementation’

January 2017
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.

Grant Results Sheet: Tebtebba - Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility: Asia and the Pacific

January 2017
The IFAD Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility (IPAF) is an innovative funding resource that indigenous communities can access to support their own solutions to development challenges. It supports self-driven development by investing in small projects that build on indigenous peoples’ culture, identity, knowledge, natural resources and income-generating activities. The goal of the IPAF programme is to empower indigenous peoples’ communities and their organizations in Asia and the Pacific to foster their self- driven development. 

Nutrition-Sensitive Interventions in East and Southern Africa (ESA) infographic

December 2016
​IFAD Investments have opportunities for improving food security and nutrition outcomes. In 2016 ESA conducted a mapping exercise on nutrition sensitive interventions to provide insight for an effective nutrition mainstreaming and operations at project level.

IFAD and Italy - A partnership to eradicate rural poverty

December 2016
IFAD is unique in being both an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency. It is also unique in mandate – the only institution exclusively dedicated to eradicating hunger and poverty in rural areas of developing countries. IFAD provides low-interest loans and grants to developing countries to finance innovative agricultural and rural development programmes and projects, and is among the top multilateral institutions working in agriculture in Africa. The decision to create IFAD was made in 1974, in the wake of the great droughts and famines that struck Africa and Asia in the preceding years. At the 1974 World Food Conference, world leaders agreed that “an international fund … should be established immediately to finance agricultural development projects”.
Additional languages: English, Italian

South-South and triangular cooperation: changing lives through partnership

November 2016

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


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

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

The Biodiversity Advantage: Global benefits from smallholder actions

November 2016

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

The Economic Advantage: Assessing the value of climate-change actions in agriculture

November 2016
​This report is aimed at readers who seek to build economic evidence in support of the inclusion of actions on agriculture in climate change plans and programmes, particularly at the national level under the umbrella of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the December 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to restrict a rise in global temperatures and manage risks. Agriculture is a sector especially sensitive to climate change. It also accounts for significant emissions and is, therefore, a priority for both adaptation and mitigation plans and actions at global, national and local levels. 

Policy case study - Benin: Farmers’ organizations interview presidential candidates on agricultural development

November 2016
In Benin, agriculture plays a central role in the national economy, contributing 32 per cent of GDP and employing a large part of the workforce. Despite significant productive potential and a diversified agricultural sector (crop production, livestock, non‑timber forest products, fisheries), the country relies heavily on imports of food products, which represent 25 per cent of the total value of imports.

Remittances at the Post Office in Africa - Serving the financial needs of migrants and their families in rural areas

November 2016

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

Second African Conference on Remittances and Postal Networks

November 2016

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.

The Drylands Advantage: Protecting the environment, empowering people

November 2016

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

Case study: Tonga Agriculture Sector Plan (TASP)

November 2016
Agriculture is the predominant economic activity in Tonga, contributing around 20 per cent of GDP. About 75 per cent of Tonga’s population lives in rural areas, and agriculture and fishing are the main sources of livelihoods. Fewer than 10 per cent of farmers are commercial producers and most of Tonga’s agriculture is thus still based on traditional/subsistence farming systems. The agriculture sector has been stagnant for a decade, with virtually no growth recorded between 2005 and 2012. Factors contributing to this situation include outmigration of the rural population, an ageing farmer population, declining export opportunities, and the increasing frequency and impact of climate change-related extreme weather events. Tonga’s export vulnerability lies in its reliance on very few commodities, such as squash, the exports of which have been falling since 2003. Rising production costs have contributed to a decline in export competitiveness, as has the difficulty in meeting quality and phytosanitary requirements for the principal markets of New Zealand and Australia.

Gender mainstreaming in IFAD10

October 2016

IFAD has a well-established history of supporting gender equality and women’s empowerment. This commitment spans 25 years, from the 1992 paper, Strategies for the Economic Advancement of Poor Rural Women, to the 2003-2006 Plan of Action for Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in IFAD’s Operations, the 2010 Corporate-level Evaluation of IFAD’s Performance with regard to Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment by the Independent Office of Evaluation, and finally the 2012 gender policy.

In the new IFAD Strategic Framework 2016-2025, gender equality is identified as one of the five principles of engagement at the core of IFAD’s identity and values. IFAD complies with the United Nations commitments on gender mainstreaming, including the United Nations System-wide Action Plan (UN-SWAP) on gender equality and the empowerment of women.

FAO IFAD - Complementarity and cooperation

October 2016
At a time when world attention is seized with the crises of migration and forced displacement, conflict, environmental degradation and climate change, FAO and IFAD are keenly aware that development must treat the underlying causes of desperation, inequality, and unsustainable ways of living on the planet.
FAO and IFAD have a shared vision, backed by technical expertise, which looks to the structural, longer-term causes of the scourges the world now aims to eradicate. Together and independently, our practices are geared toward providing sustainable solutions to food insecurity and lasting exits from the poverty trap. Together we are reaching marginalized and forgotten people who have too often been overlooked in development efforts.

Sharing a vision, achieving results: Partnership between the Netherlands and the International Fund for Agricultural Development

October 2016
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.

IFAD post-2015 implementation brief 4 - Investing in Rural People

October 2016
The importance of the rural sector for sustainable development is well recognized in the debate on the post-2015 agenda, particularly in connection with sustainable agriculture, food security and nutrition, corresponding to the second proposed Sustainable Development Goal (SDG2) drafted by the Open Working Group (OWG) this past summer. Both agriculture and more broadly rural development are, however, important also for many other SDGs related to poverty eradication, reduction of inequalities, inclusive growth, protection of ecosystems, combating of climate change and others.

IFAD post-2015 implementation brief 3 - Policy engagement, research and knowledge for inclusive and sustainable rural transformation

September 2016
In September 2015, members of the United Nations will sign up to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These – together with their targets and indicators – will guide global and national efforts to achieve sustainable development for the next 15 years. Governments will then be expected to draw on the SDGs to define national implementation strategies and effective monitoring systems, and to align public expenditures and streamline government institutions to support such strategies.

Why inclusive rural transformation is vital to address large-scale migration and forced displacement

September 2016
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) will host a high-level meeting (HLM) on 19 September 2016 to agree on a number of global commitments to address large-scale movements of refugees and migrants.

IFAD post-2015 implementation brief 2 - Scaling up results for impact on inclusive and sustainable rural transformation

September 2016
Free-standing development projects cannot, by themselves, eradicate poverty at scale. This realization is very relevant to the debate on the implementation of a universal post-2015 agenda that aims for the eradication of poverty – including rural poverty, which is the specific focus of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

IFAD post-2015 implementation brief 1 - Promoting partnerships for inclusive and sustainable rural transformation

September 2016
There is broad agreement that partnerships – both global and within countries – will be critical to achieving the post-2015 agenda. They are needed to mobilize new resources – financial and non-financial – and to find synergies among different sources of finance. They are critical to galvanize actions aligned with the new goals and targets, and to ensure that all actors work towards the same objectives. However, identifying and building partnerships that can bring the greatest value added to different parts of the post-2015 agenda is not easy. Moreover, partnerships can also bring risks and challenges.

Policy case study: Viet Nam – Review of experience of the National Target Program for new rural development

August 2016
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. 

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