Stories

We asked colleagues for their recommended reading on issues relevant to global development from gender to development to finance. If you are looking to read something a little more serious this holiday season, check out our list below.

The European Union has committed €45 million to the establishment of a new impact fund that will boost investments in small rural agribusinesses across emerging markets.

One of the major challenges facing smallholders is getting adequate and cost-efficient protection against price volatility and climate-related impacts on production.

Seven women and men from Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria and Ivory Coast take part in a one-week learning exchange programme in Brazil focused on climate resilient post-harvest management of cassava.

An international conference in Poland will try to finalise a deal on how to tackle climate change, but delegates from almost 200 countries are yet to agree on how to implement the Paris climate accord reached three years ago.

Delegates from some 200 countries are meeting for two weeks of talks on tackling climate change in Katowice, Poland at an event hosted by the United Nations.

Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel calls on the international community to increase food production and help create jobs in rural areas to help defeat poverty and hunger.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Solomon Islands honey was well positioned to begin exporting, as the industry was starting to thrive with an expanding membership and local investment. 

Rural women are just as enterprising as their male counterparts, if given equal opportunity and tools. Through training and skills development, rural women can play a much greater role in the development of their communities and boost the local economy.

There are more than 370 million self-identified indigenous people in some 70 countries around the world. Worldwide, they account for 5 per cent of the population, but represent 15 per cent of those living in poverty.

Try the Recipe at home: Gak Ik (Turkey soup) - Guatemala

Try the recipe at home: Smoked fish with sesame and sorrel sauce - Chad

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is delighted to announce a new partnership with the UN Food Gardens initiative at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

There is a direct link between human development and water. This is especially true for rural communities where access to water is a necessity to undertake subsistence agricultural production and to attain a minimum health standard. 

Poor rural people in the Afghan provinces of Kabul, Parwan and Logar are feeding their families better and increasing their earnings by taking part in the IFAD-funded Community Livestock and Agriculture Project.

The International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is celebrated on 9 August. This year’s theme is indigenous peoples’ migration and movement. It is a special day to unite our voices and walk together towards social and environmental justice.

It was just after midday, on a hot and rainy day in May, that we met with Emmanuel Abaysenga outside of the facilities of the Nyanza Milk Industries. 

Family farmers in rural Bosnia and Herzegovina and Egypt have increased their incomes, production and skills by taking part in a project funded by an IFAD grant and implemented by Oxfam Italia. 

Afro-descendants are among the most vulnerable populations in Latin America, facing the region’s worst rates of inequality, violence and rural poverty. A recent IFAD-supported grant worked to challenge these trends, empowering Afro-descendants to exercise their rights, increase their incomes and achieve greater social inclusion.

In Guatemala, a cooperative of indigenous women is now exporting goods to international markets with the support of an IFAD grant. 

Roland’s workshop sits by the side of the road, a large wooden structure from which the sounds of a lathe and a hammer emerge from time to time. In the garden, two teenagers are stripping dried palm leaves into fibre, which a woman is wrapping around a knife handle. 

Talking about the roya (coffee rust) epidemic in El Airo, a rural community in southern Loja province in Ecuador, brings back bad memories to the minds of local coffee growers. In 2010 and 2011, this fungus devastated coffee plants all over the province, plunging  farming families into poverty and forcing many of them to leave.

The SDG2 Advocacy Hub is a consortium of NGOs, advocacy groups, civil society, private sector and UN agencies that collaborate on campaigns that help achieve SDG2 - to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent the broadest consensus ever reached by humanity regarding the kind of development we aspire to. They establish a minimum for our civilization regarding the opportunities and levels of well-being to which every human being is entitled, and define humanity’s obligations with respect to our planet and its future generations.