Knowledge

This working paper proposes five recommendations that Multilateral Development Banks can adopt to implement capital adequacy reforms in a way that supports National Development Banks in transforming food systems finance.

This third edition of the GEF-IFAD Advantage highlights the partnership's advantages in various domains, including food systems, biodiversity, climate change adaptation and land degradation.

The Support to Farmers’ Organizations in Africa Programme (SFOAP): Main phase (2013 - 2018) is a continental programme which strengthens the institutional capacities, policy engagement and engagement of value chains of African farmers’ organizations (FOs). The programme supports the 5 regional networks of African FOs (EAFF, PROPAC, ROPPA, SACAU and UMNAGRI), their members at national level, and the pan-African FO (PAFO).

The MilkIT research for development project set out to improve dairy-centred livelihoods in India and Tanzania through intensification of smallholder
production focused on enhancement of feeds and feeding using innovation platforms and value chain approaches.

The project worked in the state of Uttarakhand in India and in Morogoro and Tanga regions in Tanzania. In both countries dairy has considerable potential to improve the livelihoods and nutrition of poor farming families but this potential has been underexploited. MilkIT focused on improving milk productivity through multistakeholder engagement to increase milk marketing and dairy cow feeding.

Famine, conflict, forced migration, poverty, hunger, inequality, drought, climate change.

To solve the greatest problems facing humanity, we must start at the bottom: with the underlying causes that are most difficult to alter, and with the most disadvantaged people who are most at risk and hardest to reach. These are the women and men who grow food, yet go hungry themselves: the small family farmers, traders, labourers, fishers, hunters and gatherers who are too often on the sidelines of modern value chains.

For four decades, only one organization has specialized in reaching these people. IFAD is that organization. A UN agency and an international financial institution – and the only such organization dedicated exclusively to rural areas. A people-centred organization that fights poverty and hunger hand-in-hand with families and communities. A fund that comes not just with advice and recommendations,

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.

The goal of the grant was to develop home-based production of charcoal from cooking with firewood into a new livelihood opportunity – and thus create a sustainable value chain for the economic empowerment of poor rural women.

Women from poor rural households in Ethiopia, India and Tanzania were trained to put out fires when they had finished cooking in order to prevent smouldering, and to collect household charcoal through collection clusters, process it into briquettes and market the output through innovative partnership-based enterprises.

Transparent performance reporting is a key requirement for effective resultsbased management of IFAD rural finance interventions. Better reporting, tracking and management have benefits throughout the entire IFAD project cycle, from design to implementation and learning from performance data, and for actors at different levels: partner financial service providers (FSPs); programme coordination units (PCUs); government policymakers; and IFAD decision makers and managers.

The goal of this initiative was to contribute to establishing an inclusive financial system that meets the needs of the rural poor by supporting the growth of healthy microfinance markets and microfinance service providers. Underpinning this goal is the notion that timely and credible information is critical to the functioning of markets.

The Netherlands, with its dynamic private sector and renowned research institutions, provides know-how, technology and financing to the partnership. IFAD contributes its wealth of experience in supporting development of small-scale agriculture and rural livelihoods, while acting as a catalyst for investment from other donors and governments. The strength of this partnership is demonstrated by the growing support provided by the Netherlands to IFAD-supported initiatives. It is underpinned by increasing alignment between Dutch development priorities and IFAD’s mandate.

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.

The purpose of this publication is to provide IFAD CPMs, MFIs, and all technical and financial partners with a methodological tool that will facilitate efficient implementation of the institutional transformation or regrouping processes of microfinance institutions, especially those that serve rural populations – processes that a priori are highly complex. 

Despite the progress made in the microfinance sector, its expansion has been hindered in large measure by institutional and financial impediments. This situation has led some institutions to embark on an institutionalization, institutional transformation, or regrouping process to overcome the obstacles in their path.

Microfinance institutions (MFI) take various forms these days, among them: projects, credit union or village banking networks, savings and credit cooperatives and mutual institutions, associations, capital companies, etc.

This HTDN provides guidance for project design teams on how to design a 4P component and how to support the implementation of 4Ps within IFAD-funded projects.

It builds on findings and lessons learned from previous IFAD-supported projects, as summarized in the 2013 report, IFAD and Public-Private Partnerships: Selected Project Experiences, and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS)/IFAD publication, Brokering Development: Enabling Factors for Public-Private-Producer Partnerships in Agricultural Value Chains.

This HTDN begins by defining the 4P and related concepts and then analyses the basic elements that need to be considered when designing and establishing a 4P followed by recommendations for the implementation of 4Ps.

This policy brief argues that the post-2015 development agenda should be designed to encourage governments and other actors to facilitate the economic and social empowerment of the poor rural people, in particular, marginalized rural groups such as women and indigenous peoples. 

For the first time, the three Rome-based agencies of the United Nations have joined forces to raise awareness on the importance of food losses and to stimulate change and action in member countries to reduce them.

FAO, IFAD and WFP welcome this global commitment to end poverty, hunger and malnutrition by 2030. Our proposal on how to achieve zero hunger by 2030 is in the context of the proposed Sustainable Development Goal to eliminate hunger and malnutrition by 2030, which, in turn, goes hand-in-hand with the proposed Sustainable Development Goal 1 to eliminate poverty at the same time. With almost 800 million people suffering from hunger and almost four-fifths of the extreme poor living in rural areas, it is necessary to raise agricultural and rural incomes to achieve those two priority Sustainable Development Goals.

This note highlights the lessons learned in supporting smallholder institutions and organizations. 

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. 

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. 

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 POST-2015 POLICY BRIEF

Key sources in the post-2015 debate stress the role of agriculture in food security and nutrition, and suggest possible targets underscoring the role of agriculture with respect to food security and nutrition.

In 2014, Kenya was newly classified as a lower-middle-income country, with financial services and infrastructure expected to drive growth of 5 to 6 percent annually over the next five years. At the same time, the country is still in protracted crisis, with recurrent natural disasters, conflict, severe drought and hunger affecting livelihoods. Overall, about 10 million Kenyans suffer from chronic food insecurity and poor nutrition. Recurring drought means that a larger number of people in a growing population are unable to meet their food needs. Good seasons between droughts are increasingly rare, making it difficult for households to recover from crisis to crisis. Severe land degradation, primarily caused by deforestation, unsuitable agricultural practices and flooding, has had a negative impact on agricultural production.

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. 

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.

Summary report on the workshop "Mainstreaming policy dialogue: from vision to action" organized by LAC and PTA on 17 October 2013.

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.  

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.

An analysis of lessons learnt from field application of IFAD’s sourcebook on institutional and organizational analysis for pro-poor change.

IFAD’s experience shows that, with the right support, rural communities can transform their existence in a sustainable way. Supporting the development and ownership of a viable private sector in rural areas plays a fundamental part.

We have always supported the rural private sector, providing primarily small- scale operators with financial and technical assistance to help them
improve their livelihoods.

Evidence from the ground shows that when strong rural organizations such as producer groups and cooperatives provide a full range of services to small producers, they are able to play a greater role in meeting a growing food demand on local, national and international markets. Indeed, a myriad of such institutional innovations from around the world are documented in this FAO case-study-based publication.

Nevertheless, to be able to provide a broad array of services to their members, organizations have to develop a dense network of relationships among small producers, between small-producer organizations and with markets actors and policy-makers.

G20 leaders, meeting at their Seoul Summit in November 2010, requested FAO, IFAD, IMF, OECD, UNCTAD, WFP, the World Bank and the WTO to work with key stakeholders “to develop options for G20 consideration on how to better mitigate and manage the risks associated with the price volatility of food and other agriculture commodities, without distorting market behaviour, ultimately to protect the most vulnerable.” This mandate was part of a comprehensive Multi-Year Action Plan for Development, of which food security was one theme among several including infrastructure, human resource development, trade, private investment and job creation, and growth with resilience.

The case study in Sudan, undertaken in the framework of the Initiative for Mainstreaming Innovation (IMI), analyzed training and skills development activities in the IFAD-supported Gash Sustainable Livelihoods Regeneration Project (GSLRP).

The study is an assessment of the type of capacity building and training that can be implemented in an area of great poverty using innovative approaches in community development and training. It illustrates the kind of impact that is possible at individual and community level.

IFAD commissioned this Rwanda case study, through an IMI initiative, to document the diversity of approaches of training and skills development, particularly to assess relevance, effectiveness and efficiency, outcomes and challenges with respect to the following key components:
(i) Targeting and transition to employment or business creation; (ii) Types of training and providers; (iii) Transfer of knowledge and sustainability. The objective of this study is to present the experience of IFAD in technical vocational and skills development in the context of Rwanda and by doing so, highlight the innovative features and lessons learnt for further replication.

This study was commissioned as part of IFAD’s Initiative for Mainstreaming Innovation (IMI) with the objective of learning lessons from IFAD experience in Bangladesh regarding training and capacity building, and so to improve the effectiveness of training for social development, capacity building, technology dissemination and innovation.

IFAD’s efforts to promote the innovations launched by its programmes are illustrated here with an analysis of activities to strengthen non-agricultural rural apprenticeships under the Support Programme for Rural Microenterprise Poles and Regional Economies (PROSPERER) and the future Vocational Training and Agricultural Productivity Improvement Programme (FORMAPROD)1 in Madagascar.

This paper reports on the major findings of a study on innovations in training and capacity building developed within the Rural Opportunities Programme of Colombia’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has for many years stressed innovation, knowledge and scaling up as essential ingredients
of its strategy to combat rural poverty in developing countries. This institutional review of IFAD’s approach to scaling up is the fi rst of its kind: A team
of development experts were funded by a small grant from IFAD to assess IFAD’s track record in scaling up successful interventions, its operational policies and
processes, instruments, resources and incentives, and to provide recommendations to management for how to turn IFAD into a scaling-up institution. Beyond IFAD,
this institutional scaling up review is a pilot exercise that can serve as an example for other development institutions.

As a signatory to the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, IFAD is fully committed to management for development results (MfDR) as a means to improve development performance, not only in the programmes it supports, but also within IFAD itself: ‘focus on results’ is one of the organization’s core values.

Le SARDI est une réponse concertée, à la fois à court et à long termes, aux causes structurelles profondes des crises alimentaires dans la sous-région sahélienne, traduisant un engagement à en finir avec le spectre de la famine et la résurgence des crises.

L’initiative contribuera à réduire la pauvreté des ménages et à prévenir l’insécurité alimentaire conjoncturelle et la malnutrition à travers :
• l’accroissement de la production agricole, de la productivité et l’amélioration de l’accès des producteurs au marché
• l’amélioration des systèmes d’alerte précoce des Etats et le développement de systèmes de gestion des crises

FAO, IFAD and WFP are accelerating their efforts to help countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). More than 1 billion people live in extreme poverty, suffering hunger or undernourishment. The vast majority – about 810 million women, men and children – live in rural areas, where they depend on agriculture and related activities for their survival. The three Rome-based agencies agree that none of the Goals can be achieved unless extremely poor people, especially those living in rural areas, are supported in their struggle to emerge from poverty and hunger. Consequently, the agencies are focusing their efforts on the targets of the first Goal, to reduce by half by 2015 the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and hunger.

IFAD’s collaboration with NGOs began shortly after the creation of the Fund, when it supported the Small Farmer Agricultural Credit Project in Bangladesh.