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Enabling Land Management, Resilient Pastoral Livelihoods and Poverty Reduction in Africa
March 2015
The World Initiative for Sustainable Pastoralism (WISP) is a global knowledge and advocacy network that promotes understanding of sustainable pastoral development for both poverty reduction and sustainable environmental management. WISP was executed by the International Union for Nature Conservation (IUCN). The Programme built the capacity of pastoral institutions to engage in advocacy based on state-of-the-art global learning on sustainable pastoralism, enabling pastoralist institutions around the world to network and shared experiences and opportunities, and ensured that the voice of pastoralists remained central to policy discourse and learning.
Land tenure security and poverty reduction
March 2015
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.
Effective project management arrangements for agricultural projects: A synthesis of selected case studies and quantitative analysis
March 2015
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.
IFAD in the Pacific - Partnering for rural development
February 2015
IFAD has been working in small island developing states (SIDS) for 35 years, financing investments for smallholder farmers and fishers. IFAD recognizes that small island developing states are different than other developing countries. They face constraints that are quite particular to their size, remoteness, insularity and ocean resource base. In the light of a changing world and new challenges faced by rural people living in SIDS, IFAD recently took the opportunity of the Global Conference on Small Island Developing States held in Samoa in 2014 to articulate its lessons learned and current approach to financing investment in rural people in its paper presented at the Conference, IFAD’s approach in Small Island Developing States.
Performance of IPAF small projects Desk review 2015
February 2015
The objective of the IFAD Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility (IPAF) is to strengthen indigenous peoples’ communities and their organizations by financing small projects that foster their self-driven development in the framework of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and to generate lessons learned and approaches for replication and up-scaling.
Seeds of innovation: Tapping into the knowledge of indigenous peoples
February 2015
The Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility (IPAF)1 finances small projects designed and implemented directly by indigenous peoples’ communities and their organizations. The projects are selected through global calls for proposals, based on a competitive process. In managing the IPAF when it was established in 2007, IFAD realized that the Facility was not only a grant-making mechanism, but it also contained a wealth of knowledge derived from the project proposals themselves. With its limited funding, the IPAF can support only a small number of these proposals. Thus, a knowledge-harvesting mechanism was set up with funding from the Initiative for Mainstreaming Innovation (IMI).
Scaling up note: Land tenure security
February 2015
Equitable access to land and tenure security for IFAD’s target groups are essential for rural development and poverty eradication. Tenure security influences the extent to which farmers are prepared to invest in improvements in production and land management. Interventions to be scaled-up are in this note are: (i) Recognition and recording of multiple and sometimes overlapping rights in community-level land use, watershed management, territorial, rangeland and forest management planning processes; (ii) Registration of land ownership and use rights; (iii) Equitable land access; (iv) Land conflict resolution and access to judiciary and legal aid and; (v) Civic education and public awareness-raising.
Scaling up note: Smallholder livestock development
February 2015
Smallholder livestock production is largely based on family farming and is key to poor rural people’s livelihoods, food security and employment creation.
Scaling up note: Inclusive Rural Financial Services
February 2015
With almost four decades of engagement in more than 70 countries and more than US$1.1 billion invested in rural finance (RF) initiatives, IFAD has rich and multifaceted experience, a global network of partners working at the frontier of innovation and hundreds of different types of providers addressing the financial needs of poor rural households as their clients. Most of the 3 billion people in rural areas still live on less than US$2 a day. Challenges such as economic shocks, food shortages and climate change affect poor people disproportionately. Poor rural households are typically excluded from opportunities in the formal financial sector.
Scaling up note: Climate-resilient agricultural development
February 2015
Smallholder farmers are in the front line of climate change impacts. The ecosystems on which they rely are increasingly degraded and their access to suitable agricultural land and to forest resources is declining.
Scaling up note: Smallholder institutions and organizations
December 2014
The initial step in scaling up smallholder organizations is to clarify and examine the elements that work best and decide which of these to scale up. The elements to be considered include the organizational components embedded in projects related to capacity-building, such as the managerial and technical skills and governance systems that enable organizations to fulfil their core functions and achieve their missions more effectively.
Foro de los Pueblos Indígenas en el FIDA
December 2014
Taller regional de América Latina y el Caribe en preparación de la segunda reunión mundial del Foro de Pueblos Indígenas en el FIDA.
Africa Regional Workshop Report
December 2014
Africa Regional Workshop in preparation for the Second Global Meeting of the Indigenous Peoples’ Forum at IFAD.
Case Study: Household approach for gender, HIV and AIDS mainstreaming, Malawi
December 2014
This case study illustrates how the household approach for gender, HIV and AIDS mainstreaming has been used effectively in Malawi, highlighting how it has worked in a particular context. Links are provided to resources and online materials.
Case study: Men's Campfire Conference, Zambia
December 2014
This case study illustrates how the Men's Campfire Conference (household methodology) has been used effectively in Zambia, highlighting how it has worked in a particular context. Links are provided to resources and online materials.
European Union Food Facility Programme IFAD-ECOWAS-ICRISAT
November 2014
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
November 2014
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)
November 2014
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.
Lessons learned: Strengthening smallholder institutions and organizations
November 2014
This note highlights the lessons learned in supporting smallholder institutions and organizations.
Burundi: Country Technical Note on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues
November 2014
The Twa “Pygmy” of the Republic of Burundi are a small minority of around 80,000 people that self-identify as indigenous and are considered as such by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the UN system.
How to do note: Analyse and strengthen social capital
November 2014
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.
Small farms, big impacts: mainstreaming climate change for resilience and food security
November 2014
Climate change threatens the natural resource base across much of the developing world. Climate change accelerates ecosystem degradation and makes agriculture more risky. As a result, smallholder farmers, who are so critical to global food security, are facing more extreme weather. Small-scale farmers are impacted more immediately by droughts, floods and storms, at the same time as they suffer the gradual effects of climate change, such as water stress in crops and livestock, coastal erosion from rising sea levels and unpredictable pest infestations.
Insights and lessons learned from the reflections on the PIALA piloting in Vietnam
November 2014
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.
Pacific Regional Workshop Report
November 2014
In February 2013, the First Global Meeting of the Indigenous Peoples Forum took place at the IFAD headquarters in Rome, in conjunction with the 36th session of the Governing Council. In attendance at this inaugural meeting were 31 indigenous people’s representatives from 25 countries in Asia, Pacific, Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean regions. Of the 19 Asia- Pacific regional representatives, two were from the Pacific; Mr. Anthony Wale, the Executive Director Aoke Langalanga Constituency Apex Association (ALCAA), and Ms Rufina Peter, Senior Research Officer at the PNG Institute of National Affairs. During the meeting the Pacific representatives highlighted the need for the Pacific to have a “separate identity” as per the outcomes of Asia Pacific regional preparatory workshop in Bangkok. The issue was one of visibility for the Pacific Region due to its unique, rich and diverse cultures and traditions, its significant land and sea area and its high biodiversity. The Pacific Regional meeting proposed three action plans, of which the Pacific Regional Workshop in preparation of the Second Global Meeting of the Indigenous Peoples’ Forum at IFAD is a direct result.
GFR 2013 Official Report
November 2014
This report proceeds from the Global Forum on Remittances held in Bangkok, Thailand in 2013.
Case study: Household approach, Zambia
November 2014
This case study illustrates how Household Approach (household methodology) has been used effectively in Zambia, highlighting how it has worked in a particular context. Links are provided to resources and online materials.
Case study: Chiefs and traditional leaders, Zambia
November 2014
This case study illustrates how the Chiefs and Traditional Leaders Household Methodology has been used effectively in Zambia, highlighting how it has worked in a particular context. Links are provided to resources and online materials.
A field practitioner's guide: Institutional and organizational analysis and capacity strengthening
November 2014
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.
A time of transition: Agricultural development and rural poverty reduction in the Near East and North Africa
November 2014
Since 1978, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has worked with small-scale farmers in 122 countries and territories around the world to help them overcome rural poverty and increase their food and nutrition security. IFAD has invested a total of about US$15.6 billion in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries, reaching more than 400 million people. Agricultural development can be a major driver of poverty reduction. IFAD acts as an advocate for poor rural people, helping to create an enabling environment – with appropriate policies, know-how, finance, infrastructure and market access – for them to improve their lives and livelihoods.
Investing in the future: Agricultural development and rural poverty reduction in Europe and Central Asia
November 2014
The International Fund for Agricultural Development works with small-scale farmers in 98 countries and territories around the world to help them overcome rural poverty and increase food security. Since 1978, IFAD has invested over US$16 billion in grants and low-interest loans to projects that have reached more than 430 million people. Agricultural development can be a major driver of poverty reduction. IFAD acts as an advocate for poor rural people, helping to create an enabling environment – with appropriate policies, know-how, finance, infrastructure and market access – for them to improve their lives and livelihoods.
Additional languages:
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Toolkit: Strengthening smallholder institutions and organizations
November 2014
The “Strengthening smallholder institutions and organizations toolkit” provides valuable guidance to help practitioners analyze and address issues related to smallholder institutions and organizations during the devopment of country strategies and in the design and implementation of programmes and projects.
The Smallholder Advantage: A new way to put climate finance to work
November 2014
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.
How the United Nations System Supports Ambitious Action on Climate Change
November 2014
Climate change and sustainable development are the central challenges of our time. They are inseparably linked and need to be addressed together. Action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to climate impacts is essential for ensuring sustainable development. At the same time, only sustainable development can provide the stable political, economic, social and environmental conditions that all countries need to address climate change successfully and build carbon-neutral economies. This is why the UN system is fully committed to supporting the international community as it confronts climate change while working to build a sustainable world for the twenty-first century.
How to do note: Strengthen community-based natural resource management organizations
November 2014
Natural resources (land, water, forests, fisheries) are fundamental to the survival of rural people. The livelihoods of most poor people depend on agriculture, which in turn hinges on the continued productiveness of the land and availability of water resources. Land and water, in addition to forests, offer the compendium of ecological goods and services that smallholders in developing countries need for their economic development; they can also provide a safety net in times of crisis. These resources are also global public goods. Natural resources need to be managed sustainably not only on smallholder farms and in individual sectors (e.g. selected sources of water or forest reserves) but in the totality of ecosystems that support their existence.
Learning from each other: South-South and triangular cooperation in East and Southern Africa
October 2014
South-South and triangular cooperation (SSTC) has become an integral part of IFAD’s support to ESA programmes. The transfer of effective approaches and technologies enables countries of the South to join forces in meeting their aims of reducing rural poverty and ensuring food security. By using experts from other countries in project design, for instance, or setting up learning and sharing opportunities in the region, IFAD has helped foster such exchanges.
Congo: Country Technical Notes on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues
October 2014
The indigenous population of the Republic of Congo (RC) include the Baka, Mbendjele, Mikaya, Luma, Gyeli, Twa and Babongo peoples. Depending on sources, these peoples represent a small minority of 1.25 to 10 percent of RC’s estimated population of 4.4 million, primarily of Bantu origin.
Lessons learned: Commodity value chain development projects
October 2014
The purpose of this Lessons Learned note is to provide design teams with observations based on lessons from IFAD and other donors’ projects that may help in the design of value chain projects.
Gender equality and women's empowerment - IFAD's work and results
October 2014
IFAD is committed to gender equality. Women embody half the talent and energy at any country’s disposal. That’s why greater gender equality leads to higher economic growth and better lives.
Toolkit: Lines of credit
October 2014
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.
Case study: Transformative Household Methodology, Ethiopia
October 2014
This case study illustrates how the Transformative Household Methodology has been used effectively in Ethiopia, highlighting how it has worked in a particular context. Links are provided to resources and online materials.
Case study: Men’s Travelling Conference, Kenya
October 2014
This case study illustrates how the Men's Travelling Conference (household methodology) has been used effectively in Kenya, highlighting how it has worked in a particular context.
Lines of Credit
October 2014
This note provides an overview on lines of credit illustrating the the key issues and the main challenges, opportunities and benefits.
How to do note: Loan Guarantee Funds
October 2014
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.
Toolkit: Key performance indicators and performance-based agreements
October 2014
This note provides an overview on key performance indicators and performance-based agreements highlighting the main issues, challenges, opportunities and benefits.
How to do note - Key performance indicators and performance-based agreements
October 2014
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.
How to do note: Lines of credit
October 2014
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.
Lessons Learned: Loan Guarantee Funds
October 2014
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.
Lessons learned: Community-based financial organizations
October 2014
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.
Toolkit: Loan guarantee funds
October 2014
This note provides an overview on Loan Guarantee Funds highlighting the main issues, challenges, opportunities and benefits.