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Diaspora Investment in Agriculture (DIA) initiative
Insights from Participatory Impact Evaluations in Ghana and Vietnam
This paper by Adinda Van Hemelrijck and Irene Guijt explores how impact evaluation can live up to standards broader than statistical rigour in ways that address challenges of complexity and enable stakeholders to engage meaningfully. A Participatory Impact Assessment and Learning.
Approach (PIALA) was piloted to assess and debate the impacts on rural poverty of two government programmes in Vietnam and Ghana funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
GFRD2015 Official Report
Methodological Reflections following the second PIALA Pilot in Ghana
IFAD has to report to its Members States on the total number of rural people lifted out of poverty1. The government programmes it funds, however, are implemented in complex ways and environments that challenge mainstream evaluation practice. The challenge for IFAD and its co- implementing and co-funding partners, moreover, is not just to rigorously assess impact but also to understand the processes generating impact in order to realize its ambitious targets (IFAD, 2011). Albeit a strong emphasis on quantitative measurement, there is a need for impact evaluation that fosters learning and responsibility.
Executive summary, final report on the participatory impact evaluation of the Root & Tuber Improvement & Marketing Programme in Ghana
Strengthening Country-Level Agricultural Advisory Services in the target countries of Burkina Faso, Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Uganda
Enabling rural transformation and grassroots institutional building for sustainable land management and increased incomes and food security
Investing in rural people in El Salvador
IFAD has acquired considerable experience during its three decades of partnership with the country. It has contributed directly and indirectly to the mobilization of resources aimed at removing structural obstacles to the development of rural poor people. This has been achieved through the active involvement of, and coordination with, family farmers, indigenous peoples, rural youth organizations, government, international cooperation agencies, civil society and, more recently, the private sector.
IFAD-funded projects mainly support family farmers and entrepreneurs in municipalities in which poverty is prevalent. Activities have also helped to address needs arising after the end of the 12-year internal armed conflict and the 2001 post-earthquake reconstruction process.
Transforming rural areas
is produced on small farms that are usually family-run. Yet it’s also true that 70 per cent of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas, where the lack
of opportunity is forcing many young rural people to leave their homes in search of work in overcrowded cities or abroad.
The use of remittances and financial inclusion
African Conference on Remittances and Postal Networks – official report
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.
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
The Republic of Turkey and IFAD - Partnership for smallholder investments and opportunities
Sending Money Home: European flows and markets
Toolkit: Youth Access to Rural Finance
The Lessons Learned and How To Do Note on this topic provide IFAD country programme managers, project design teams and implementing partners with insights and key guidance on designing and offering appropriate financial services for rural youth. The toolkit on Youth Access to Rural Finance synthesizes best practices and offers examples from around the world.
Lessons learned: Youth Access to Rural Finance
Although there have been improvements in YFS access, youth are still lagging significantly behind adults in being able to access financial tools. Across high- and low-income countries, young people are less likely than adults to have a formal account. There are even starker differences related to a country’s income level, with 21 per cent of youth in low-income economies having a formal account compared with 61 per cent in upper-middle-income economies (Demirguc-Kunt et al., 2013).
Even with this data, determining the exact extent of youth access to financial services can be complicated because there is a lack of consistent data and definitions on youth (see Box 3). The lack of data is more limited for rural areas.
While there is some analysis of the urban-rural gap in access to financial services, with those living in cities significantly more likely to have an account than rural residents (Klapper, 2012), there are currently no comprehensive studies with disaggregated data for rural youth.
PARM Result Factsheet May 2015
How to do note: Youth access to rural finance
Investing in rural people in Cuba
Given the challenges the agricultural sector faces, IFAD is in a position to serve as one of the country’s strategic partners, contributing to the ongoing modernization process.
Cooperatives in Cuba are key actors in ensuring food security, as they represent 80 per cent of the country’s agricultural production. The Government of Cuba has expressed interest in re-establishing the partnership with IFAD with a view to modernizing agriculture.
This will be achieved mainly through developing non-state smallholder farmer business cooperatives. In this respect, IFAD is well placed to provide technical assistance through its projects to increase the physical, human, social and environmental assets of cooperatives.
Financing microenterprises led by women
Investing in rural people in Somalia
Somalia’s poverty and food security situation remains critical after years of conflict and natural disasters. Since the 1980s, IFAD has supported nine programmes in the country for a total of US$140 million.
There is currently no country strategic opportunities programme for Somalia.
However, the strategic objectives of IFAD interventions in Somalia can be summarized as follows:
• Increase incomes and food security by supporting agriculture and related activities, improving access to water, sanitation and health care, strengthening the natural resource base and building rural financial services;
• Identify and promote pro-poor investment mechanisms in rural areas for dissemination, replication and scaling up; and
• Build the capacity of the diaspora and promote the transformation of people in the diaspora into agents of development through remittances – the portion of their earnings that migrants outside the country send home.
Effective project management arrangements for agricultural projects: A synthesis of selected case studies and quantitative analysis
Scaling up note: Inclusive Rural Financial Services
Scaling up note: Smallholder institutions and organizations
Lessons learned: Strengthening smallholder institutions and organizations
How to do note: Analyse and strengthen social capital
Small farms, big impacts: mainstreaming climate change for resilience and food security
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
GFR 2013 Official Report
A field practitioner's guide: Institutional and organizational analysis and capacity strengthening
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.
Toolkit: Lines of credit
Lessons Learned: Loan Guarantee Funds
How to do note: Loan Guarantee Funds
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.
Lessons learned: Community-based financial organizations
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.
How to do note - Key performance indicators and performance-based agreements
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
implementation and scaling up.
Lessons learned: Lines of credit
This Lessons Learned note provides practical suggestions and guidelines to CPMs and the country programme management to help them design and implement programmes and projects.
The purpose of this guidance is to provide CPMTs with some observations based on lessons learned from IFAD and other donors’ projects, as well as from the World Bank Operations Evaluation Department (OED 2006) LOC review that may help in the design of LOCs.
How to do note: Support community-based financial organizations
Toolkit: Loan guarantee funds
Toolkit: Community-based financial organizations
Toolkit: Key performance indicators and performance-based agreements
Lines of Credit
Lessons learned: Key performance indicators and performance-based agreements
regular and consistent manner. This note discusses the use of KPIs as well as the challenges associated with it. This discussion is followed by a review of the lessons learned by IFAD and other organizations, and concludes with strategic recommendations for follow-up.
Linking matching grants with loans: Experiences and lessons learned from Ghana
Family farming in Latin America - A new comparative analysis
Serving Smallholder Farmers: Recent Developments in Digital Finance
PARM Annual Report 2014
Collaboration for strengthening resilience - Country case study - Kenya
The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool (MPAT) User's guide
MPAT was originally developed in China and India. In China, iterative testing was conducted in 2008 in order to refine and improve the draft Household and Village Surveys. After five rounds of testing in China and India, the project team felt that the surveys and indicators were sufficiently developed to warrant a large-scale pilot in both countries.
In China, the pilot was conducted in the context of an ongoing IFAD-supported project in Gansu Province in China’s arid north. The data from the pilots in China and India (see also Box 2 and Box 3) were then shared with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre so they could conduct an independent evaluation of MPAT. Results from a pilot village in China are presented, together with a photo of farmers planting seeds below.
The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool (MPAT)
The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool provides data that can inform all levels of decisionmaking by providing a clearer understanding of rural poverty at the household and village level. As a result, MPAT can significantly strengthen the planning, design, monitoring and evaluation of a project, and thereby contribute to rural poverty reduction.
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
Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests - Implications for IFAD
Following an inclusive consultation and negotiation process, which involved more than 70 countries, international organizations, and representatives of the civil society and the private sector, the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGs) were officially endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security on 11 May 2012. The VGs set out principles, technical recommendations and practices for improving the governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests. They promote secure tenure rights and equitable access to these resources as a means of eradicating hunger and poverty, supporting sustainable development and protecting the environment. They give recommendations to countries and to other key actors, who are strongly encouraged to adopt and use them on a voluntary basis.
Partnership in progress: 2012-2013 – Volume 2 Annexes
Investing in rural people in Benin
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.
Preparación jurídica para el cambio climático y el fomento al desarrollo rural en México
Enabling the rural poor to overcome poverty in Jordan
IFAD has committed US$71.4 million in loans to Jordan since 1981 to support agricultural development and reduce rural poverty. The funds have been used in six agricultural development programmes and projects with a total value of US$189.3 million.
The Government of Jordan and project participants have contributed US$63.2 million. The programmes and
projects are designed by IFAD in collaboration with rural people, the government and other partners. They address poverty through promotion of sustainable natural resource management, particularly water and soil conservation. A seventh project is being designed.
Down to earth:Sustainable rural transformation
Small-scale producers in the development of coffee value chain partnerships
Small-scale producers in the development of tea value chain partnership
Small-scale producers in the development of cocoa value chain partnership
Fighting rural poverty - the role of ICTs
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.
FFR Brief - Five years of the Financing Facility for Remittances
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.
Sending money home to Asia: trends and opportunities in the world's largest remittance marketplace
Strengthening institutions and organizations
Enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty in Mauritius
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.
Enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty in Seychelles
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 - Complementary actions for the benefit of African producers
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).
Supporting Small-Scale Producers of Certified Sustainable Products
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.
Agricultural value chain finance strategy and design
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.