Recherche

Project Completion Reports (PCRs) are a critical tool for development organizations, both for accountability purposes, and as a means of learning from project experience to inform the design of future operations. This paper analyses a sample of PCRs from IFAD to assess the extent to which evidence is used to determine a project's effectiveness in bringing about development. 

The report finds that most claims on results are not supported by evidence, and discusses implications for the objective measurement of development effectiveness.

This paper analyses how food safety challenges and requirements affect smallholder farmers' access to markets. High food safety standards in destination countries force governments of developing countries to make strategic choices about establishing domestic standards and upgrading the infrastructure and knowledge base of smallholder farmers.

The paper suggests mechanisms that can be used to respond to these challenges, to enable smallholder inclusion in different markets.

This issue presents and analyses experiences from the following IFAD-funded projects and programmes:

Brazil: Sustainable Development Project for Agrarian Reform; Settlements in the Semi-arid North-east (Dom Hélder Câmara Project);

China: South Gansu Poverty Reduction Programme;

Ghana: Rural Enterprises Programme; Morocco: Rural Development Project in the Mountain Zones of Al-Haouz Province; 

Uganda: Vegetable Oil Development Project.

This is the first issue of the Journal of Law and Rural Development, published by IFAD. IFAD’s mandate to address rural poverty and promote rural development is unique among international organizations. For many years IFAD limited its activities to financing projects and programmes implemented by its Member States, but over the last decade it has begun to transform itself into a knowledge centre and a key participant in the international policy dialogue around rural development issues. The launch of this journal is another step forward in this transformation.

This paper provides an overview of concepts, issues and research on the relationship between financial inclusion and inclusive rural transformation.

It demonstrates how changing demand for financial services, innovations in rural finance, and different investment strategies affect the interplay of supply and demand.

This paper analyses how different types of social protection interventions affect rural livelihoods. It examines how these interventions can help rural transformation by increasing productivity and asks how they can influence inclusiveness.

Using country-level evidence, it suggests that the effectiveness of social protection depends upon specific contexts and combinations of interventions, and asks what this means for building policy. 

This paper seeks to answer three main questions: (i) What are fragile states and situations and how do they relate to issues of inclusive
structural and rural transformation? (ii) In three selected case studies of diverse fragile situations (in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Haiti and the Republic of the Sudan – drawing on IFAD financed programme and country experience), what have been the key elements of structural and rural transformation and to what extent has rural transformation been inclusive? (iii) In these cases, how does fragility affect the inclusiveness of rural transformation? Which policies and approaches can successfully promote inclusive rural transformation in
fragile situations?