Savoirs

IFAD launched its Junior Professional Officer (JPO) programme in 1980, just three years after IFAD was established, and has maintained a dynamic JPO programme ever since. The JPO programme was originally established by the General Assembly of the United Nations as a way of recruiting young professionals for service in the field of development assistance. The programme is sponsored by Member States interested in investing in young, university-trained nationals of their own country or other countries, for employment in organizations of the United Nations system.

Farmers’ Africa is a capacity-building programme that aims to improve the livelihoods and food security of rural producers in Africa. It works with farmers’ organizations (FOs) to help them evolve into more stable, performing and accountable organizations that effectively represent their members and advise them on farming enterprises.

The programme supports the main functions of FOs, promotes their engagement in policy processes and contributes to their professionalization. It also supports the efforts of FOs to provide economic services to their members. 

The African Postal Financial Services initiative is a joint regional programme launched by IFAD and the European Commission in collaboration with the World Bank, the Universal Postal Union (UPU) – a specialized United Nations agency for the postal sector, the World Savings Banks Institute/European Savings Banks Group (WSBI/ESBG) and the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).

This uniquely broad-based partnership seeks to enhance competition in the African remittance market by promoting and enabling post offices in Africa to offer remittances and financial services. Post offices are ideally placed to deliver remittances in rural areas, but they often lack the business model, technology and expertise to process real-time payments such as remittances in an efficient and safe manner. The goal of this initiative is to promote, support and scale up key postal networks in Africa in the integration of remittance services.

IFAD has to report to its Members States on the total number of rural people lifted out of poverty1. The government programmes it funds, however, are implemented in complex ways and environments that challenge mainstream evaluation practice. The challenge for IFAD and its co- implementing and co-funding partners, moreover, is not just to rigorously assess impact but also to understand the processes generating impact in order to realize its ambitious targets (IFAD, 2011). Albeit a strong emphasis on quantitative measurement, there is a need for impact evaluation that fosters learning and responsibility.

Cette note aidera les équipes de conception et de supervision des projets du FIDA à améliorer les indicateurs de S-E des projets filière

L'approche, étape par étape, de l’analyse de filière et de la conception de projet suit le cycle fondamental de conception des projets du FIDA.

This paper is a guide to current debates about agricultural development. It analyses the changes in development approaches and thinking in recent decades and explores today's critical issues in agricultural and rural development policy. With the main focus on Africa, the paper also includes insights from Asia and Latin America.

Depuis le milieu des années 80, le développement impressionnant du Ghana a fait de ce pays l’un des plus performants d’Afrique, mais des problèmes économiques et le déficit budgétaire pèsent actuellement sur la croissance. Environ 40% de la population rurale, soit cinq millions de personnes, vivent en dessous du seuil de pauvreté national.

En dépit de l’abondance des ressources agricoles et pétrolières du pays, la pauvreté est omniprésente au Nigéria et elle n’a cessé de gagner du terrain depuis la fin des annés 90. Environ 70% des habitants vivent avec moins de 1,25 USD par jour. La pauvreté est particulièrement grave en milieu rural où jusqu’à 80% de la population vit en dessous du seuil de pauvreté tandis que les services sociaux et l’infrastructure y sont limités. Les femmes et les hommes pauvres des zones rurales sont tributaires de l’agriculture pour leur nourriture et leurs revenus. Environ 90% de la production vivrière nationale sont fournis par les paysans qui cultivent de petites parcelles et dépendent des pluies plutôt que de l’irrigation. 

​Egypt has undergone dramatic political upheaval over the last four years, following long-simmering grievances over the lack of economic opportunities and political inclusion that led to a revolutionary uprising in early 2011.

With a population of 92 million, Ethiopia is the second most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa and one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, with consistent growth averaging more than 10 per cent over the last ten years. Per capita income is, however, markedly lower than the average for developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole (US$400 compared with US$1,547 per capita per year).1 Much of Ethiopia’s growth is attributable to the agricultural sector, which accounts for about 45 per cent of GDP, almost 90 per cent of exports and 85 per cent of employment. About 90 per cent of the agricultural land under cultivation is devoted to subsistence agriculture. Livestock and livestock products are important in Ethiopia and contribute about 10 per cent of the country’s foreign exchange earnings, with hides and skins constituting about 90 per cent of this.

Peru is an upper-middle-income country with one of the fastest-growing economies in the region. In the last decade, the country more than halved its poverty rate, which fell from 59 to 24 per cent. Reduction was uneven geographically, however. In the rural areas of the highlands and the rainforest areas, poverty still affects about 53 and 43 per cent of the population1 respectively, and particularly indigenous communities. 

The analysis underlying the results-based country strategic opportunities programme for the Republic of the Sudan (RB-COSOP) developed in 2013 identified major constraints on the reduction of rural poverty. These included prolonged conflicts, the separation of South Sudan (2008), reduced oil revenues for the Government of Sudan; greatly increased numbers of people and livestock reliant on static technologies; environmentally and economically unsustainable pressures on finite natural resources exacerbated by the negative impacts of climate change; and little residual capacity within the public sector, all within a problematic geopolitical environment.

Bangladesh has recently been classified as a lower-middle-income country and aims to reach upper-middle-income country status by 2021. To achieve this, the Government of Bangladesh will need to overcome considerable challenges in agricultural development and rural economic growth. The country’s annual GDP growth averaged about 6 per cent between 2000 and 2013, and was accompanied by a decline in the national poverty rate from 48.9 per cent to 31.5 per cent over the first decade of the century, effectively lifting some 16 million people out of poverty.

In terms of population, China, with 1.35 billion people, is the largest country in the world. It is the first developing country to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing by half the number of its people living in extreme poverty and hunger, and only 6.3 per cent of the population were estimated to be living in extreme poverty in 2013. Substantial progress has been made with respect to overall development and China is now considered in the high human development category of UNDP’s Human Development Index, ranking 91 out of 187 countries.

The project will address sustainable management in shade forests, marine areas, and mangroves in the buffer zones of protected areas (Obo and Principe natural parks) through the development of participatory management plans in five co-management areas, and the implementation of investments for integrated ecosystem management.

This paper explores aspects of promoting rural women’s leadership in producers’ organizations (POs). Despite the vast amount of work that women perform in the agriculture sector, their role remains largely unrecognized. The concerns and issues of women farmers are scarcely heard at the local, national and global levels. One reason for this silence is that there are not enough women in leadership positions to be able to represent the interests of rural women.
This shortage is compounded by women’s lack of voice in decision-making processes at all levels − from households to rural organizations − and in policymaking.

The SCCF project focuses on individual/groups of women and youth (mainly involved in cassava processing activities) and men farmers (mainly involved in cassava production activities, processing and marketing) living in fairly remote rural areas. These target beneficiaries are most prone to food insecurity
because of the difficult access to markets.

Prendre en compte les priorités des petits exploitants en matière d’adaptation

Depuis quelques années, la Mauritanie connaît la stabilité politique et les élections présidentielles de juin 2014 se sont déroulées dans un climat de paix. Par ailleurs, le pays a enregistré un solide taux de croissance de 6,7% en 2013 et reste placé sous le signe de la stabilité macroéconomique. Toutefois, la Mauritanie est exposée à des vulnérabilités, liées à un manque de diversification, à la volatilité des prix internationaux et à la dépendance à l’égard des flux de capitaux étrangers. Bien que la pays ait réussi à augmenter le revenu par habitant ces dernières années, la répartition des revenus n’a pratiquement pas changé au cours des deux dernières décennies, et le chômage reste un défi de taille. Il est essentiel de promouvoir une gestion rationnelle des ressources naturelles pour favoriser une croissance à long terme inclusive.