Tools and guidelines

Smallholder livestock production is largely based on family farming and is key to poor rural people’s livelihoods, food security and employment creation. 

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.

Strong links to markets for poor rural producers are essential to increasing agricultural income, generating economic growth in rural areas and reducing hunger and poverty. Every product that is sold locally, nationally or internationally is often part of an agricultural value chain (VC). From a development perspective, VCs are one of the instruments through which market forces can be harnessed to benefit poor rural women and men – not just producers, but wage earners, service providers and others.

GALS has been developed under Oxfam Novib’s (ON) Women’s Empowerment Mainstreaming and Networking (WEMAN) Programme since 2008 with local partners and Linda Mayoux. The use of GALS in value chain development (VCD) was piloted by ON and partners in Uganda through a small IFAD grant (2009- 2011). It was rolled out by ON with local partners in Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda with the support of a large IFAD grant (2011-2014) and in other countries with cofunding from other donors.

The objectives of this How To Do Note are to provide a practical introduction to basic concepts, identify key issues to be analysed at the design stage and provide references to the most relevant literature.

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 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.