Recursos

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. 

Since 1978, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has worked
with small-scale farmers in 122 countries and territories around the world to help
them overcome rural poverty and increase their food and nutrition security. IFAD
has invested a total of about US$15.6 billion in grants and low-interest loans to
developing countries, reaching more than 400 million people.
Agricultural development can be a major driver of poverty reduction. IFAD acts as
an advocate for poor rural people, helping to create an enabling environment – with
appropriate policies, know-how, finance, infrastructure and market access – for
them to improve their lives and livelihoods.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development works with small-scale farmers in 98 countries and territories around the world to help them overcome rural
poverty and increase food security. Since 1978, IFAD has invested over US$16 billion in grants and low-interest loans to projects that have reached more
than 430 million people.

Agricultural development can be a major driver of poverty reduction. IFAD acts as an advocate for poor rural people, helping to create an enabling
environment – with appropriate policies, know-how, finance, infrastructure and market access – for them to improve their lives and livelihoods.

The “Strengthening smallholder institutions and organizations toolkit” provides valuable guidance to help practitioners analyze and address issues related to smallholder institutions and organizations during the devopment of country strategies and in the design and implementation of programmes and projects.

El FIDA considera que los pequeños agricultores son más que meras víctimas del cambio climático: constituyen una parte fundamental de la solución de este problema “perverso” del cambio climático. 

Climate change and sustainable development are the central challenges of our time. They are inseparably linked and need to be addressed together. Action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to climate impacts is essential for ensuring sustainable development. At the same time, only sustainable development can provide the stable political, economic, social and environmental conditions that all countries need to address climate change successfully and
build carbon-neutral economies. This is why the UN system is fully committed to supporting the international community as it confronts climate change while working to build a sustainable world for the twenty-first century.

Natural resources (land, water, forests, fisheries) are fundamental to the survival of rural people. The livelihoods of most poor people depend on agriculture, which in turn hinges on the continued productiveness of the land and availability of water resources. Land and water, in addition to forests, offer the compendium of ecological goods and services that smallholders in developing countries need for their economic development; they can also provide a safety net in times of crisis. These resources are also global public goods. Natural resources need to be managed sustainably not only on smallholder farms and in individual sectors (e.g. selected sources of water or forest reserves) but in the totality of ecosystems that support their existence.

South-South and triangular cooperation (SSTC) has become an integral part of IFAD’s support to ESA programmes. The transfer of effective approaches and technologies enables countries of the South to join forces in meeting their aims of reducing rural poverty and ensuring food security. By using experts from other countries in project design, for instance, or setting up learning and sharing opportunities in the region, IFAD has helped foster such exchanges. 

The indigenous population of the Republic of Congo (RC) include the Baka, Mbendjele, Mikaya, Luma, Gyeli, Twa and Babongo peoples. Depending on sources, these peoples represent a small minority of 1.25 to 10 percent of RC’s estimated population of 4.4 million, primarily of Bantu origin.

Esta publicación de Lecciones Aprendidas tiene como objetivo proporcionar a los equipos de diseño observaciones basadas en experiencias concretas provenientes de proyectos del FIDA y de otros donantes que puedan ser útiles para el diseño de proyectos de cadenas de valor. Este documento es parte de un conjunto de publicaciones (caja de herramientas) que incluye además un documento de Notas sobre el Diseño de Proyectos de Cadenas de Valor Agrícolas y un Cuadro General

IFAD is committed to gender equality. Women embody half the talent and energy at any country’s disposal. That’s why greater gender equality leads to higher economic growth and better lives.

The LOC is a loan to a participating financial institution (PFI) for on-lending to customers who are expected to repay their loans with interest.

Este estudio de caso ilustra cómo la Metodología para fomentar la transformación en los hogares se ha utilizado de manera eficaz en Etiopía, destacando cómo ha funcionado en un contexto particular.

This case study illustrates how the Men's Travelling Conference (household methodology) has been used effectively in Kenya, highlighting how it has worked in a particular context.  
 

This document highlights IFAD’s and other partners’ experiences with products, services, methods and approaches associated with Loan Guarantee Funds. It will assist IFAD’s country programme manager (CPM) to take up evidence-based good practices that can aid IFAD’s thematic focus.

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. 

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.

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.

This How To Do Note highlights the philosophy and rationale for LOCs, focusing on different types of LOC arrangements, as well as their strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. It summarizes global experience with LOCs in order to clearly outline when they should and should not be used. It presents practical aspects of specific approaches, methodologies and models that have been tested and can be recommended for
implementation and scaling up. 

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. 

This How To Do Note helps design teams to improve their understanding of different types of community-based financial organizations and the support structures they need to best serve remote poor rural communities.

This note provides an overview on Loan Guarantee Funds highlighting the main issues, challenges, opportunities and benefits.

This note provides an overview on IFAD's support to community-based financial organizations highlighting the main issues, challenges, opportunities and benefits.

This note provides an overview on key performance indicators and performance-based agreements highlighting the main issues, challenges, opportunities and benefits.

This note provides an overview on lines of credit illustrating the the key issues and the main challenges, opportunities and benefits.

This case study illustrates how Household Mentoring has been used effectively in Uganda, highlighting how it has worked in a particular context. Links are provided to resources and online materials.

The toolkit on Household Methodologies (HHMs) is composed of three parts.

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.

This How To Do Note provides a description of the participatory land-use planning (PLUP) methodology with the steps that should be followed to implement it in IFAD interventions with some practical examples of how this has been done. 

This How To Do Note provides guidance on how to carry out a land assessment at the project design stage.

Through this assessment, it will be possible to identify key land tenure issues in the project area and to indicate how they can be resolved through project activities and interventions.

This How To Do Note provides guidance on how to carry out a land assessment at the RB-COSOP stage to provide indications on key land tenure issues that the country (or area of interest) is facing and how they could be strategically addressed to achieve the country’s strategic objectives. 

This note highlights lessons learned on pastoralism land rights and tenure aiming to inform the design and implementation of country strategies and projects from the point of view of land tenure issues faced by pastoralists.

It also provides examples of how IFAD has dealt with some of these issues through its programmes and projects.

Por tenencia de la tierra se entiende las normas, autoridades, instituciones, derechos y reglamentaciones que rigen el acceso a la tierra, su control y el de los recursos relacionados con ella. 

El FIDA siempre ha adoptado un enfoque proactivo para la focalización en la población rural pobre de todas las edades, con el objetivo de reducir las desigualdades sociales y económicas que favorecen la aparición y la perpetuación de la pobreza.

Hasta hace relativamente poco tiempo, la atención prestada a las necesidades y vulnerabilidades específicas de los jóvenes1 era escasa, debido a que no se les consideraba partes interesadas por derecho propio, sino beneficiarios subalternos e indirectos, y por tanto invisibles.

Esta percepción ha cambiado de forma radical y los proyectos financiados por el FIDA cada vez incluyen más disposiciones explícitas para el desarrollo en favor de los jóvenes.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) can be used in an IFAD-sponsored project to measure performance in a
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.

The post-2015 development agenda can be structured to encourage governments and other actors to focus on strengthening the resilience of poor rural people and their livelihoods.

A number of targets that provide the basis to achieve this have already been proposed, particularly focusing on the promotion of more sustainable practices in agriculture.

IFAD POST-2015 POLICY BRIEF

Key sources in the post-2015 debate stress the role of agriculture in food security and nutrition, and suggest possible targets underscoring the role of agriculture with respect to food security and nutrition.

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.

Las notas contienen herramientas para el diseño y la ejecución de proyectos basados en buenas prácticas que se han recogido de la experiencia en el terreno. Asimismo, proporcionan orientación a los equipos para aplicar recomendaciones específicas acerca de las políticas operativas del FIDA, los requisitos básicos para la realización de proyectos y los instrumentos de financiación. 

Young people are the future. But all too often in today’s world young women and men are marginalized and excluded – from decent employment and from crucial decisions about how to address the big challenges that face us all. Their voices are rarely heard in democratic debate and their needs and views are rarely reflected in policies and programmes. Yet more than ever the world needs young people’s ideas, their talents and their energy. In rural areas, we particularly need their drive and innovative skills to sustainably produce the food required by an increasingly populous and urbanized world.

This note aims to inform the design and implementation of results-based country strategic opportunities programmes (RB-COSOPs) and projects by describing how youth are affected by insecurity of tenure and how such issues have been dealt with. It should be used at strategy, design and implementation stages.

The note explains the issues related to youth and land tenure and how they have been addressed in IFAD and other projects and programmes.

Bangladesh is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries affected by climate
change. During the monsoon period, the Haor region of Bangladesh becomes
completely inundated with 4-8 metres of water for around 6-7 months of the year.
Flash fl oods are common, and in some years 80-90 per cent of crops are lost
because of extreme weather events. The situation is expected to worsen as a climate
change-related shift towards pre-monsoon rainfall is coinciding with the paddy rice
pre-harvest period. This severely affects food output in the Haor, which provides up
to 16 per cent of national rice production.
 

The agricultural sector in Rwanda has been hit hard by climate change. Agricultural
production is increasingly exposed to drought, intense and erratic rainfall, high winds
and emerging seasonal and temperature shifts. If not addressed, climate variability
will mean signifi cant economic costs – estimated at up to US$300 million annually
by 2030.

The northern part of Nigeria is particularly vulnerable to climate change, which is reducing rural income as a result of decreased agricultural productivity – agricultural yields have declined by 20 per cent over the last 30 years in the north. ASAP interventions under CASP will strengthen the capacity of farmers to use climate information for the planning and promotion of climate-resilient farming techniques. It will also implement larger investments to reduce the impact of climate hazards on rural infrastructure, farms and livelihoods.

The project will increase the availability of adaptation assets and knowledge, which will enable target households to cope with the changing climate situation. 

The programme will support institutional capacity-building and greater public awareness on topics related to climate change resilience. Water users’ associations and farmer organizations, among other
members of the selected value chains, will benefit from activities such as the dissemination of climate change adaptation toolkits, national and international exchange visits, the dissemination of good practices
and training.

NICADAPTA will improve incomes and quality of life for rural families – and reduce their vulnerability to the impact of climate change – by facilitating access to markets for valueadded coffee and cocoa. It will introduce water efficiency and crop diversification measures such as coffee-cocoa intercropping in coffee plantations to buffer the effects of rising temperatures.

Kyrgyzstan is a food-deficit and low-income country, with a geographical position and topographical make-up that contribute to making it one of the most vulnerable
countries to the impacts of climate change in Central Asia. The country suffers from drought, land and mudslides. Flooding events and river erosion are set to increase in frequency and intensity. The mountainous nature of the country renders 45 per cent of Kyrgyzstan’s land inhospitable. The majority of the population live in valleys and at the foothills of the mountains, where vulnerability to climate-related hazards is highest.

Viet Nam is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world and among the countries hardest hit by climate change. Rising sea levels (between 75 and
100 centimetres by the end of this century) are expected to affect 20-50 per cent of the low-lying Mekong Delta. Changes in rainfall and temperatures are increasing the risk of fl oods, typhoons and droughts. Climate change has serious implications for Viet Nam’s socio-economic development, especially in the densely populated and productive Mekong Delta.  

The programme will support the design and implementation of participatory management plans for ecosystem conservation to alleviate stresses and increase the resilience of fragile habitats.

The programme will stimulate more sustainable economic growth for women and men in
rural communities. This includes increasing their resilience to climate change impacts by
helping communities to diversify their livelihoods options and improving the management
of natural resources. Investments in climate-resilient infrastructure will also support
agricultural development.

ASAP resources are complementing the first component (natural resource management, investment in assets and enterprise development) of ACCESOS. 

Matching grants (MGs) are used increasingly by multilateral and bilateral institutions, including the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Bank, to cofinance productive assets and investments. Although confined initially to investments with clear public good characteristics, their use has spread. They finance a broad array of assets and productivity-enhancing technologies for groups, companies and individuals, benefiting the private sector directly with clear private goods characteristics. MGs are used as a short-term financing instrument to promote diffusion of technologies and enable target groups to carry out productivity-enhancing investments, compensating for the limited availability and high costs of term finance. At times, MGs incorporate a “crowding in” mechanism to attract financiers by sharing the risks and increasing the effective collateral value of the asset being financed. They are also used to support innovations that, by their nature, are more risky and less likely to attract loan finance. Despite their appeal as a relatively simple instrument to address access to finance constraints in the short run, there are several risks, which can limit their effectiveness and impact. When poorly designed and poorly implemented, MGs can distort and crowd out private and public investments. 

Between 2009 and 2012, the IFAD-supported Scaling up Micro-irrigation Systems (SCAMPIS) project developed a market approach for the dissemination of locally adapted drip irrigation kits. 

The approach identifies the technology that is best suited to the local context and appropriate for the most vulnerable rural inhabitants. It then builds a sustainable local supply chain for the irrigation equipment that makes the technology affordable and available, not just for the duration of the project but in the long term.

In just three years, the pilot project was able to dramatically change the lives of 30,000 farmers and their families (in total, around 150,000 poor rural people) on three continents.

This paper outlines IFAD’s strategic approach to enhancing food security and promoting sustainable smallholder agriculture development in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the context of exacerbated impacts of climate change and persistent challenges to market access. A renewed approach will provide an opportunity for increasing results and impacts from agriculture and fisheries, reducing the high transaction costs of project delivery in SIDS, adjusting to an ever-changing development environment and – most of all – avoiding the overlooking of SIDS’ persistent fragility and the risk that they are cut off from development assistance.

In 2005, IFAD and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) formed a partnership to promote a better understanding of the links between rural poverty, livelihoods and water access.

Together they developed an approach to map information relating to poverty, livelihood activities and water availability across sub-Saharan Africa.

By correlating this information, they have been able to substantiate context-specific proposals for water investments.

Los resultados de los estudios señalan la importancia de la agricultura como actividad económica para la reproducción de estas unidades en todo el continente y demuestran que el conjunto de los agricultores familiares especializados es el grupo mayoritario en relación al total de las unidades productivas. Por otro lado, comprobamos que la función de residencia rural y la combinación de actividades y fuentes de ingresos es una característica importante que existe en todos los países estudiados, y que los ingresos y las actividades no agropecuarias de los agricultores familiares no son insignificativos, aunque son bajos.

This publication shows how tailor-made educational programmes (such as the Junior Farmer Field and Life Schools approach) can provide rural youth with the skills and insights needed to engage in farming and adopt environmentally friendly production methods. 

These Guidelines are the result of an extensive process of consultation and a concerted effort that brought together different fisheries and
climate change experts in different moments in time. Substantive inputs were provided by a range of stakeholders, including smallholder
farmers, aquaculturists, academics, personnel from ministries of agriculture and environment, and development cooperation partners.

Improved Learning Initiative for the design of a Participatory Impact Assessment & Learning Approach (PIALA) in Viet Nam.

This Focus Note introduces some recent developments in this rapidly changing space. The featured case studies (i) identify traditional pain points in serving smallholder farmers (such as the cost and risk of making payments to farmers and delivering subsidized credit), (ii) discuss how DFS are being used to overcome these pain points, and (iii) highlight some initial obstacles and successes.

The objective of this Annual Progress Report is to review the activities of the Platform for Agricultural Risk Management (PARM) during its first year of life or, more precisely, thirteen months since its launch in December 2013.

In 2014, Kenya was newly classified as a lower-middle-income country, with financial services and infrastructure expected to drive growth of 5 to 6 percent annually over the next five years. At the same time, the country is still in protracted crisis, with recurrent natural disasters, conflict, severe drought and hunger affecting livelihoods. Overall, about 10 million Kenyans suffer from chronic food insecurity and poor nutrition. Recurring drought means that a larger number of people in a growing population are unable to meet their food needs. Good seasons between droughts are increasingly rare, making it difficult for households to recover from crisis to crisis. Severe land degradation, primarily caused by deforestation, unsuitable agricultural practices and flooding, has had a negative impact on agricultural production.

Among the world’s developing regions, Asia and the Pacific region has witnessed the deepest and fastest structural transformation. The Green Revolution that began in the 1960s spurred the rapid spread of improved varieties of cereal crops, accompanied by public investments in and policy support to the agricultural sector. As a result, productivity of wheat and rice increased dramatically, stimulating economic growth and reducing rural poverty. In the following decades, and especially since 2000, the structural transformation further accelerated, leading to a declined share of the sector in both output and GDP and, to a lesser extent, in the total employment. Facilitated by a conducive institutional and policy environment, the process brought about a more diversified, market-oriented and high-value agricultural production; the expansion of food processing, agribusiness, food retailing and exports; and increased domestic and international competitiveness of agriculture – albeit with country and subregional differences. Nevertheless, poverty, deprivation and hunger remain widespread. Two thirds of the world’s poor and hungry people live in the region, mostly in rural environments. Income inequality has been rising fast in a number of countries, especially between urban and rural areas, with adverse effects on poverty reduction and increased risk of social conflict and political instability. Moreover, the countries and subregions are at different stages of the structural transformation process. In most developing economies, labour productivity in agriculture is still low and the shift of the agricultural workforce to other sectors is yet to take place. Therefore, agriculture remains a critical livelihood option and the largest employer sector for most rural people. 

Conozca los resultados y el impacto del FIDA leyendo el Informe Anual 2013. En él se relatan asimismo las historias de las mujeres y hombres de las zonas rurales en los que el Fondo invierte, y se describen las dificultades con que se enfrentan y sus logros. En el Informe se detalla la labor del FIDA a fin de que las necesidades de las comunidades rurales figuren siempre entre las cuestiones prioritarias de los programas de desarrollo internacionales, ya que el 76 por ciento de las personas más pobres del mundo vive en zonas rurales. En él se ofrecen, además, los datos y cifras que el Fondo comunica periódicamente a sus Estados miembros y asociados.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has undergone a transformation in recent years, adapting itself to an environment more complex and challenging than at any other point in its history: persistent hunger and food insecurity; rising and more volatile food prices; floods, droughts and the ever-more apparent effects of climate change; increasing competition for land; global financial crisis; and a growing human population that has surpassed 7 billion.

In 2001, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Council approved the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) as an executing agency under its policy of expanded opportunities for executing agencies. 

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.

This publication illustrates IFAD’s experience in closing the gender gap and mobilizing the ‘gender advantage’ in climate change adaptation through ten case studies from across the world. 

This book examines the growing divergence between subsistence and business oriented small farms, and discusses how this divergence has been impacted by population growth, trends in farm size distribution, urbanization, off-farm income diversification, and the globalization of agricultural value chains.

This overview document represents a synthesis of 4 policy briefs produced by IFAD, complemented by joint work with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) in the area of food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture in the post-2015 agenda. 

IFAD’s work in the post-2015 debate is inspired by its unique mandate to invest in poor rural people to enable them to overcome poverty and to transform their lives.

Article in F@rmletter - The E-magazine of the World’s Farmers (pg 12-13). It describes the Flexi Biogas system as an innovative portable biogas model. 

This was the result of small grant to pilot the technology as part of the Innovation Mainstreaming Initiative funded by the UK Department for International Development.

El Instrumento de evaluación de la pobreza multidimensional proporciona datos que pueden informar a todos los niveles de la toma de decisiones al ofrecer una comprensión más clara de la pobreza rural a nivel de los hogares y las aldeas. Como resultado, la MPAT puede reforzar significativamente la planificación, el diseño, el seguimiento y la evaluación de un proyecto, y contribuir así a la reducción de la pobreza rural.