Livestock and Horticulture Development Project

This project aims to help small-scale rural producers, who are mainly women, to increase their incomes by improving the yield and quality of their horticultural and livestock products. To that end, it uses formal contracts encouraging farmers to produce high-quality market products. It also targets young people through the establishment of pilot gardens and market-oriented small livestock and poultry production units.

Moreover, the project provides practical support to the village groups known as kafos, which do much of the farming in The Gambia – thus enabling farmers to build on their existing activities and improve their use of increasingly scarce water and land resources. Other project activities include:

• Rehabilitating and modernizing kafo-run production units with sheds, animal housing, multi-purpose water-use systems and fencing.
• Providing starter kits that contain breeding stock, day-old chicks, appropriate animal feeding and vaccination instructions, and other equipment and inputs.
• Training kafos in best practices for agriculture and husbandry, and in group entrepreneurship development.
• Strengthening the marketing capacity of kafos for identifying and negotiating contracts with traders and suppliers.
• Supporting community-based extension delivery services.
• Creating links with existing microfinance facilities supported by IFAD's Rural Finance Project to extend farmers' access to credit.

The project has adopted a mentoring approach to effectively reach the most vulnerable people within its target areas. To pave the way for improved local governance, it promotes the active involvement of communities in a participatory monitoring and evaluation system; the use of a voucher-based remuneration system for extension services; and the introduction of performance-based contracts for service providers.


Source: IFAD