Knowledge

What can information and communication technologies (ICTs) do for the world's 900 million extremely poor people who live in rural area? The question is crucial to the fight to enable rural poor people to overcome poverty.

This document reports on the remarkable achievements of the Financing Facility for Remittances (FFR) in its five years of operation. It provides an overview of the importance of remittances to development, the strategy that the Facility has adopted to date, and the lessons. 

The FFR Brief learned from the innovative projects it has financed. Looking forward, the report highlights the tremendous opportunities offered by large-scale distribution networks, adoption of new technologies, mobilization of migrant capital and partnering with the private sector. Each chapter has been designed to be readable as a stand-alone discussion of the specific topic area it addresses. As a number of projects resulted in lessons learned in multiple areas, projects may be mentioned more than once, and their impact in each topic area will be discussed separately.

This report is an executive summary of a forthcoming compilation of studies on remittances to Asia and the Pacific. The findings are based on a series of studies commissioned by IFAD and carried out by Developing Markets Associates, the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), the World Bank and the World Savings Bank Institute, and studies and analyses undertaken by the World Bank. 

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

IFAD and the Government of Mauritius are moving towards a new form of partnership that differs from the standard model for low-income countries, which was followed in Mauritius until 2005. 

IFAD recognizes that the country now has sufficient national resources to address rural poverty, so the focus of interventions has shifted from financing projects towards developing a collaborative approach with the government to reduce the incidence of poverty.

This approach includes policy dialogue, knowledge management and sharing, and partnership-building.

IFAD first worked in Seychelles in 1991, when it began financing the Employment Generation Project, which was completed six years later.
More recently, stakeholders from Seychelles have participated in activities funded by an ongoing IFAD grant, which supports the Regional Initiative for Smallholder Agriculture Adaptation to Climate Change in the Indian Ocean Islands. This initiative is creating a regional knowledge-management platform on adaptation strategies for small-scale farmers.

The platform actively disseminates information on conservation agriculture practices such as farming with low or zero tillage, as well as composting, integrating livestock and farming activities, and other environmentally sustainable measures.

Farmers’ Africa is a capacity-building programme that aims to improve the livelihoods and food security of rural producers in Africa. It works with farmers’ organizations (FOs) to help them evolve into more stable, performing and accountable organizations that effectively represent their members and advise them on farming enterprises. 

The programme supports the main functions of FOs, promotes their engagement in policy processes and contributes to their professionalization. It also supports the efforts of FOs to provide economic services to their members. The total cost of the programme is estimated at EUR 40 million over five years and includes an overall contribution of EUR 26.9 million from the European Union (EU). 

The rapid growth in consumer demand for sustainable agricultural products represents an enormous opportunity for small-scale farmers and producers in developing countries.

To help them seize this and other opportunities, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) funds a range of projects in rural areas. A growing number of projects support smallholder production of commodities that are certified under programmes such as Fairtrade, Organic, UTZ Certified and Rainforest Alliance, including:

• Cocoa and coffee in Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, and Sierra Leone

• Fruits in the South Pacific and Madagascar

• Cosmetic and medicinal plants in India and Southern Africa.

This technical note serves as a guide to the design of appropriate programme interventions that apply value chain financing approaches to the development of competitive agricultural value chains. 

It emphasizes interventions that promote financial inclusiveness and the overall development goals of governments, as well as those of technical and funding agencies.

This document is intended to aid delivery channels, microfinance providers in particular, in working with insurance companies to develop successful microinsurance products for the low-income market. 

A systematic new-product development process is crucial to the success of microinsurance products for many reasons, including: Saving money – by maximizing the potential for product success; Saving management and staff time – by ensuring, within reason, that the product has market demand, and by working out staff and systems issues early in the process, when it is easier and cheaper to make changes; Generating goodwill in one’s market – by offering products that will not have to be withdrawn or substantially altered once they are offered throughout the market. The process outlined in this manual will help microinsurance developers create successful microinsurance products. ‘Success’ means meeting the needs of the three major parties in the microinsurance relationship: low-income policyholders, the insurer and delivery channels.

This manual is intended as an aid to microinsurance institutions. It presents a technique called ‘process mapping’ that can support institutions in self-analysis by assisting them in understanding, developing and improving business processes. Although the concepts presented may be used for many types of projects and processes, this manual was specifically developed as a supplement to Microinsurance product development for microfinance providers (McCord 2012).

The manual describes how a process map can be drawn, analysed and adapted for the microinsurance sector. It offers practical guidance about which processes to concentrate on, and guides the reader through the task of improving these processes, first on paper and then in practice. For more information please click on the link below.

Development can nurture peace. The two go hand in hand. If we create programmes that help people overcome the barriers to their own development, we
give them a way to fight poverty and hunger instead of each other. We reduce the appeal of violent and destructive responses to conditions that are, admittedly,
intolerable. No one should go to sleep hungry. No one should see a child’s potential wither under malnutrition, illiteracy and hopelessness. No woman should be
denied access to resources just because she is not a man. No one should be denied a voice simply because it suits someone else to keep them silent.

This technical note aims to help project designers and reviewers of the design process to decide whether matching grants are the most appropriate financing instrument in a given context and what to consider when designing a matching grant component. The note focuses on use of these grants to finance productive assets and investments for business purposes. For more information please click on the lonk below.

IFAD has supported rural poverty reduction and agricultural development initiatives in the Republic of Guatemala since 1986. During its first decade in the country, IFAD’s work was oriented towards supporting the government in consolidating the peace process and rebuilding the social fabric in zones that were affected by Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict. 

It also focused on constructing an economic and institutional platform for the development of marginalized rural and indigenous communities.
Over the years, IFAD operations have evolved from localized rural development.

En los últimos treinta años, el FIDA así como sucesivos gobiernos peruanos han desarrollado programas en la sierra, donde los niveles de pobreza son severos. Esto se construye sobre modelos de desarrollo comunal, lecciones aprendidas sistemáticamente y ampliando tanto las áreas cubiertas como el alcance de las intervenciones. Los proyectos FEAS, MARENASS, CORREDOR y SIERRA alcanzaron 120,000 hogares en más de 1,600 comunidades pobres en la sierra sur. Estos proyectos han sacado de la pobreza extrema al 30 por ciento de los hogares objetivos, y 35 por ciento salieron completamente de la pobreza. Estos proyectos secuenciales representan el sendero de un proceso de escalonamiento complejo, pero exitoso.

There is a growing consensus that climate change is transforming the context for rural development, changing physical and socio-economic landscapes and makingsmallholder development more expensive. But there is less consensus on how smallholder agriculture practices should change as a result. The question is often asked: what really is different about ‘climate-smart’ smallholder agriculture that goes beyond regular best practice in development? 

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.

The Syrian Arab Republic, like other countries of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, is a dry country that is prone to drought, with large areas of desert or semi-desert that are too fragile to be cultivated but will support grazing for a restricted number of livestock. These areas of ecological fragility, if overgrazed and poorly managed, can quickly become degraded and desertified and, in the worst case scenario, can eventually become biologically sterile. Good management of these resources is therefore critical to maintaining healthy ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend on them.

IFAD is currently one of the two largest donors supporting Yemen’s rural agricultural sector. IFAD has worked in Yemen since the Fund’s creation, and has acquired a wealth of experience and knowledge of the economy and society, and developed a wide network of partners in the country. IFAD’s goal in Yemen is to achieve improved, diversified and sustainable livelihoods for poor rural women, men and young people, especially those who depend on rainfed agriculture and livestock production systems in the poorest areas. 

IFAD has three main strategic objectives in Yemen:
• empowering rural communities by strengthening partnerships with civil society organizations and using community-driven approaches so that poor rural people can manage local community development activities;
• promoting sustainable rural financial services and pro-poor rural enterprises by developing savings and credit associations for disadvantaged groups in remote rural areas and developing rural enterprises that provide jobs for the unemployed, especially young people and women;
• enhancing food security for poor households by restoring the productive agricultural base and improving productivity so that poor households can produce enough for household needs and a surplus that can be sold.

IFAD loans and grants have supported the government’s investments in poverty reduction programmes since 1979. Before 1998, when Hurricane Mitch devastated the country,IFAD was almost the only institution investing in rural development and poverty alleviation in Honduras.

IFAD also designed one of the first projects to be implemented after the disastrous hurricane: the National Fund for Sustainable Rural Development Project (FONADERS).