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Scaling up results: overview
Like many development partners, IFAD has found that innovative free- standing development projects alone are not an effective vehicle for eradicating poverty at scale: they must be part of a longer-term process that can sustain learning and scaling up.
The Mitigation Advantage: Maximizing the co-benefits of investing in smallholder adaptation initiatives
Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) brochure
The Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) was launched by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in 2012 to make climate and environmental finance work for smallholder farmers. A multi-year and multi-donor financing window, ASAP provides a new source of cofinancing to scale up and integrate climate change adaptation across IFAD’s approximately US$1billion per year of new investments. The programme is joined up with IFAD’s regular investment processes and benefits from rigorous quality control and supervision systems.
ASAP is driving a major scaling up of successful ‘multiple-benefit’ approaches to smallholder agriculture, which improve production while reducing and diversifying climate-related risks. In doing so, ASAP is blending tried-and tested approaches to rural development with relevant adaptation know-how and technologies. This will increase the capacity of at least 8 million smallholder farmers to expand their livelihood options in an uncertain and rapidly changing environment.
Finance for Food: Investing in Agriculture for a Sustainable Future
IFAD Policy brief 2: An empowerment agenda for rural livelihoods
The use of remittances and financial inclusion
Proceedings of the 2nd Global Meeting of the Indigenous Peoples Forum at IFAD, 12-13 February 2015
African Conference on Remittances and Postal Networks – official report
ODI ASAP Progress Review
This Progress Review evaluates the status of IFAD’s Adaptation to Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) at programme mid-term, 2.5 years after the first ASAP-investment has been approved by the IFAD Executive Board.
Creating pathways out of poverty in rural areas: Managing weather risk with index insurance
Refinancing facilities: IFAD introduces an innovation in rural finance development
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.
What others say about IFAD
Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary-General
IFAD is unique in the very clear focus of its mandate, and this sharp focus that also gives IFAD great strength, your specialist knowledge of agriculture and rural development will be even more valuable in the years ahead. Speech to IFAD staff, Chief Executives Board for Coordination meeting, May 2014
Marisa Lago, Assistant Secretary for International Markets and Development, United States Department of Treasury
By taking an innovative, community-based approach to investing in smallholder farmers - the most vulnerable members in rural societies – IFAD is an important partner in the global fight against poverty and hunger. I’ve witnessed first-hand the positive impact of IFAD’s work in providing technical training, facilitating access to microfinance, and strengthening farmers’ organizations in countries ranging from Uruguay to Tanzania to Morocco. The United States was a founding member of IFAD and proudly remains a strong supporter.
Fulfilling the promise of African agriculture
Yet this barely scrapes the surface of Africa’s promise. Only 6 per cent of cultivated land is irrigated in Africa, compared with 37 per cent in Asia, for example. Africa also has the largest share of uncultivated land with rain-fed crop potential in the world. In addition, African farmers use substantially less fertilizer per hectare than counterparts in East Asia and the Pacific.
Improving nutrition through agriculture
part of that mission. Of course, other sectors have roles to play, but good nutrition begins with food and agriculture.
Policy case study Lao People’s Democratic Republic - Exchange on good practices for public policy consultations
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.
Policy case study Mexico - Supporting design of a national programme as a policy solution for reducing rural poverty
Policy case study Tajikistan - Exchange on good practices for public policy consultations
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.
Policy case study East African Community - Supporting public hearings on the East African Community Cooperative Societies Bill
Indonesia: Policy study to add value to the project design process
Leveraging South-South and Triangular Cooperation to achieve results - Proceedings of the IFAD Roundtable Discussion
Delivering public, private and semi-private goods: Institutional issues and implementation arrangements
Getting to work: financing a new agenda for rural transformation
Brokering Development - Summary of Indonesia Case Study
and Agricultural Development (READ), implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture. The PPP was developed as a partnership between the Ministry of Agriculture (represented by READ) and a private sector partner, Mars.
The Republic of Turkey and IFAD - Partnership for smallholder investments and opportunities
Sending Money Home: European flows and markets
Brokering development - Enabling factors for public-private-producer partnerships in agricultural value chains
development.
Brokering Development-Summary of Ghana Case Studies
This is a summary of the Ghana Country Report, based on research carried out in 2014 in association with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) as part of an IFAD-funded programme on the role of PPPs in agriculture.
It is one of the four IFAD project-supported Public-Private-Producer Partnerships analysed for the research report ‘Brokering Development: Enabling Factors for Public-Private-Producer Partnerships in Agricultural Value Chains’.
The report syntheses the four case studies and discuss the findings on how PPPPs in agricultural value chains can be designed and implemented to achieve more sustained increases in income for smallholder farmers and broader rural development.
Brokering Development - Summary of Rwanda Case Study
Brokering Development - Summary of Uganda Case Study
A case study of the Oil Palm PPP in Kalangala, Uganda. The PPP aimed to establish oil palm production (a new cash crop in Uganda) through private sector-led agro-industrial evelopment on Bugala Island, Lake Victoria.
The study is mainly based on qualitative data collection through semi-structured key informant interviews and focus group discussions, and a document review. Researchers interviewed representatives of the main partners involved.
Mainstreaming Food Loss Reduction Initiatives for Smallholders in Food-Deficit Areas
Remittances and mobile banking: The potential to leapfrog traditional challenges
Viewpoint 5: The human face of development: Investing in people
When we look at the world today, we see impressive gains as well as daunting challenges. The Millennium Development Goal target of halving extreme poverty rates was met at the global level five years ahead of the 2015 deadline. There are now more than 100 middle-income countries, as diverse as Brazil, Lesotho and Vanuatu. It is estimated that developing countries’ share of the global middle-class population will rise from 55 per cent today to 78 per cent by 2025.
However, amid rising affluence in some countries and regions, there is also growing inequality. In 2015, there will still be 970 million people living in poverty – the vast majority of them in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. And there remain 842 million chronically undernourished people in the world. Volatile commodity prices bring hunger to the poorest, and instability to markets and societies. Climate change and environmental degradation throw long shadows over all of humanity’s gains. Against this background, we must confront the question of how humankind is going to continue to feed and sustain itself in the future.
Why IFAD?
This coming year could determine not only whether the world rises to the considerable challenges now facing it—climate change, persistent hunger, increasing inequality, stubborn poverty—but also affecting the fate of generations to come. With a growing population that will exceed 9 billion by 2050, the increasing effects of climate change, a widening gap between rich and poor, and growing competition for resources, the major issues facing humanity cannot wait. Deliberation must give way to deliberate action.
But the global political will to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger and malnutrition within a generation, and the conviction that this is achievable, are growing. An ambitious agenda is emerging in the process of identifying post-2015 development goals. It aims to end poverty everywhere in all its forms, and to end hunger and achieve food security. And it plans to do so sustainably. This would perhaps be one of the greatest steps ever taken to secure the future of humanity and the life of the planet.
IFAD Policy on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment
Land tenure security and poverty reduction
Land is fundamental to the lives of poor rural people. It is a source of food, shelter, income and social identity.
Secure access to land reduces vulnerability to hunger and poverty. But for many of the world’s poor rural people in developing countries, access is becoming more tenuous than ever.
Seeds of innovation: Tapping into the knowledge of indigenous peoples
European Union Food Facility Programme IFAD-ECOWAS-ICRISAT
To address food security problems and soaring prices for basic commodities, in December 2008 the European Union launched a Food Facility totalling €1 billion spread over three years, from 2009 to 2011. Under this initiative, the regional programme IFAD-EU-ECOWAS Food Facility was established with a budget of €20 million. The regional programme covers a number of countries in West Africa.
To assure food security and protect the population from recurrent crises, countries dependent on foreign aid for much of their food supply, such as Benin, Mali, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, have designed strategies and programmes to support food security that are intended to increase food production through the intensification of strategic crops such as rice, cassava, yams and ground nuts, and widespread use of selected seeds and mineral fertilizers.
IFAD and Belgian Survival Fund Joint Programm - 25 years of cooperation
The Belgian Fund for Food Security (BFFS) was created by the Belgian Parliament in 1983 in response to the more than one million drought- and faminerelated deaths in East Africa. BFFS provides grants to pay for rural development projects, with a focus on food security and nutrition, in some of the poorest countries in Africa, helping extremely poor people to become healthier and more productive and lowering the risk that they will face starvation.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized United Nations agency, was established as an international financial institution in 1977 as one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. It is dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in rural areas of developing countries. Through low-interest loans and grants, it develops and finances programmes and projects that enable poor rural people to overcome poverty themselves.
The International Year of Family Farming (IYFF)
What is the International Year of Family Farming? Small family farms are the key to reducing poverty and improving global food security. The United Nations declared 2014 the International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) to recognize the importance of family farming in reducing poverty and improving global food security. The IYFF aims to promote new development policies, particularly at the national but also regional levels, that will help smallholder and family farmers eradicate hunger, reduce rural poverty and continue to play a major role in global food security through small-scale, sustainable agricultural production.
The IYFF provides a unique opportunity to pave the way towards more inclusive and sustainable approaches to agricultural and rural development that: Recognize the importance of smallholder and family farmers for sustainable development; Place small-scale farming at the centre of national, regional and global agricultural, environmental and social policies; Elevate the role of smallholder farmers as agents for alleviating rural poverty and ensuring food security for all; as stewards who manage and protect natural resources; and as drivers of sustainable development.
GFR 2013 Official Report
The Smallholder Advantage: A new way to put climate finance to work
IFAD sees smallholder farmers as more than just victims of climate change: they are a vital part of the solution to the ‘wicked’ climate change problem.
Learning from each other: South-South and triangular cooperation in East and Southern Africa
IFAD Policy brief 4: Promoting the resilience of poor rural households
The post-2015 development agenda can be structured to encourage governments and other actors to focus on strengthening the resilience of poor rural people and their livelihoods.
A number of targets that provide the basis to achieve this have already been proposed, particularly focusing on the promotion of more sustainable practices in agriculture.
IFAD Policy brief 1- Leveraging the rural-urban nexus for development
IFAD Policy brief 3: Investing in smallholder family agriculture for global food security and nutrition
Youth: Investing in young rural people for sustainable and equitable development
Linking matching grants with loans: Experiences and lessons learned from Ghana
IFADs approach in Small Island Developing States: A global response to island voices for food security
FAO-IFAD Using livelihood to map best investments in water
In 2005, IFAD and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) formed a partnership to promote a better understanding of the links between rural poverty, livelihoods and water access.
Together they developed an approach to map information relating to poverty, livelihood activities and water availability across sub-Saharan Africa.
By correlating this information, they have been able to substantiate context-specific proposals for water investments.
Youth and agriculture: Key challenges and concrete solutions
Guidelines for Integrating Climate Change Adaptation into Fisheries and Aquaculture Projects
climate change experts in different moments in time. Substantive inputs were provided by a range of stakeholders, including smallholder
farmers, aquaculturists, academics, personnel from ministries of agriculture and environment, and development cooperation partners.
Serving Smallholder Farmers: Recent Developments in Digital Finance
Collaboration for strengthening resilience - Country case study - Kenya
Transforming rural areas in Asia and the Pacific
Reforming IFAD, transforming lives
The IFAD-GEF Advantage: Partnering for a sustainable world
In 2001, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Council approved the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) as an executing agency under its policy of expanded opportunities for executing agencies.
The Gender Advantage: Women on the front line of climate change
This publication illustrates IFAD’s experience in closing the gender gap and mobilizing the ‘gender advantage’ in climate change adaptation through ten case studies from across the world.
IFAD post-2015 overview document: A rural transformation agenda
This overview document represents a synthesis of 4 policy briefs produced by IFAD, complemented by joint work with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) in the area of food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture in the post-2015 agenda.
IFAD’s work in the post-2015 debate is inspired by its unique mandate to invest in poor rural people to enable them to overcome poverty and to transform their lives.
FLEXI BIOGAS: Making Biogas Portable and Affordable
Article in F@rmletter - The E-magazine of the World’s Farmers (pg 12-13). It describes the Flexi Biogas system as an innovative portable biogas model.
This was the result of small grant to pilot the technology as part of the Innovation Mainstreaming Initiative funded by the UK Department for International Development.
Report of the side event: “Moving Forward: Breaking The Glass Ceiling”
“MOVING FORWARD: BREAKING THE GLAS CEILING” Strengthening women’s participation and influence in farmers’ organizations
Partnership in progress: 2012-2013 – Volume 2 Annexes
Family Poultry Development - issues, opportunities and constraints. Working Paper
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) are funding a number of projects developed to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) related to improving food security, income generation and women’s empowerment, while respecting traditional knowledge and socio-cultural values.
Family poultry production plays an essential role in some of these projects.
Partnership in progress: 2012-2013 – Overview & Conclusions
This report is the most comprehensive attempt in IFAD for taking stock of the different experiences in collaborating with FOs and identifying the emergence of regional trends.
This provides the starting point for scaling-up and broadening successful approaches in other countries and contexts.
The report analyses the modalities of the ongoing partnership over the biennium 2012-2013, highlighting successful stories and achievements within IFAD country programmes and grant portfolio.
Partnership in progress: 2012-2013 – Volume I: Main Report
This report is the most comprehensive attempt in IFAD for taking stock of the different experiences in collaborating with FOs and identifying the emergence of regional trends.
This provides the starting point for scaling-up and broadening successful approaches in other countries and contexts. The report analyses the modalities of the ongoing partnership over the biennium 2012-2013, highlighting successful stories and achievements within IFAD country programmes and grant portfolio.
The report is based on the results of a survey completed by IFAD country programme managers, interviews with relevant IFAD staff and an indepth desk review of documents concerning ongoing and new projects, as well as selected regional grants and country programmes.
IFAD and public-private partnerships - selected project experiences
Gender and rural development brief - Near East and North Africa
Mainstreaming policy dialogue: from vision to action - workshop summary report
Gender and rural development brief - Pacific Islands
Towards a Plan for Country-Level Policy Dialogue. Discussion Paper
This paper seeks to draw on both the positive aspects of current practice and the critiques that have been made, to propose an action plan for strengthening IFAD’s engagement in country level policy dialogue.
It outlines a set of broad principles underpinning IFAD’s approach, the first of which is the reaffirmation that policy engagement must be shaped and led by the CPM.
It also makes specific proposals for more effectively integrating country-level policy dialogue in IFAD country programmes; for improving IFAD’s monitoring, reporting and knowledge management on the subject; and for strengthening in-house capacity for country-level policy dialogue.
Country-level policy engagement-opportunity and necessity
Describes what IFAD and the Policy and Technical Advisory division are supporting country-level policy engagement.
It also summarizes past experience and explains how Country Programme Managers can access funds to engage in country-level policy dialogue.