IFAD social reporting blog

By Nancy Kaawe, Philipp Baumgartner, Weijing Wang

Quite well in our estimation, during the project completion review mission in May 2017. Targeting of beneficiaries in the project was highly gender sensitive, with women accounting for 53.1% of direct project participants and 47.6% of total beneficiaries. Gender targets were met, as the project began with a baseline of 46.6% of women in the population of target townships.
The portion of active participants among female beneficiaries was roughly 3% more than that of male participants.

While the high participation of women in the project can partly be attributed to the growing feminization of rural agriculture in China as a result of increasing migration of men to the cities, it was also noted that: (i) the project management displayed commitment to gender concerns and working closely with women's federations at all levels, with clear targets in the manuals from the PPMO; and (ii) project interventions prioritized women and also fit demands of women. The modular approach to project implementation made it possible for Village Implementation Groups (VIGs) to request specific modules of interest to their communities.
One of the many testaments to the latter was in Baishou Township, Yongfu County, where the mission met with the VIG members of Chao Yang village. The group was composed of 11 members (5 of which were women), who recounted having requested the rural environment component of the project, and among other benefits, reported that in 2016 they had gone from selling oranges at 10CYN/KG to 12CYN/KG (20% price increase) and were selling at higher prices as compared to other villages that did not receive this component. They attributed this to having a cleaner and more sanitary environment which attracted buyers and allowed them to sell at higher prices. The data snapshots (below) providing an overview of women outreach and participation by project modules; in fact show-among other things- participation of women in the rural environment component on the higher end.

On a more critical note, the data also indicates two areas that stand out with low figures in women's participation: (i) agricultural technical extension stations and (ii) project management. Low participation of women in township agricultural stations was explained by the project as a result of limited interest or attraction of women to work in this area. It was also reported that in many cases extension staff travel to villages unaccompanied, and quite often return to the townships late in the evening, making women less suitable for this work due to security concerns. Project management however is key and cross-cutting, and further reflection and analysis of shortfalls in this area could present a learning opportunity for future projects in the country programme. Interestingly, the mission did not perceive any issues regarding the representation of women in project implementation and there is no allusion to any such issues in the documentation through the life of the project. But the numbers are what they are, and while VIGs were an overall success with good representation from women and supported collective and unanimous decisions by the villagers, the data suggests that there is still room for improvement in women's participation in project management (VIGs and PMO training).
There is a possibility that these figures may have been caused in part by the preferences of women farmers. Should we, (and if so how do we) factor such eventualities in our targets and reporting?

This remarkable lady in Pingle County made it known in no uncertain terms to the mission members that she had absolutely no interest in participating in most of the project activities, which she preferred to let her husband 'deal with'. It was quite clearly her choice.

She is a beneficiary of the community infrastructure and rural environment components in Xin Da Lang village, where they innovated the use of alternative waste (persimmon peels) to fuel biogas.

Another area of interest is the project support to farmers' cooperatives, which displays a great deal of potential for positive outcomes and impact. This area has been satisfactory where initial increases in women's participation and household incomes are concerned. In Leye County, women's participation in cooperatives reached 45.8%, while in Longzhou County; women's participation reached 48.1%. The overall average falls at around 50.3% women participants in cooperatives. A chicken cooperative in Longzhou County increased its membership from 16 to 67 in a span on 3 years of operation. While interviewing 3 women in the cooperative, economic empowerment showed through as members were able to sell around 5,000 to 6,000 chickens a year.
Cooperatives also have potential to provide opportunities for further employment to farmers/members in the processing part of the value chain, as seen in two cooperatives in Pingle County. One of the main challenges however, is in ensuring that poor smallholder farmers, especially women and minorities continue to be included in these cooperatives beyond the life of the project. The cooperatives module in GIADP involved concerted efforts between the implementing agencies, project management offices at provincial, county and township levels, to apply stipulations for household inclusion of productive poor smallholder farmers. These targeting efforts will need to be sustained by poverty alleviation programmes set by local governments.

This IFAD-supported sweet potato cooperative in Zhangjia Township, Pingle County is led by a woman, Ms. Li Zhen, who also employs mostly women farmers to work on sweet potato processing which is done by hand. This allows them to supplement their income with around CYN 60 per day, working close to their homes. The women interviewed told of having more decision power and reduced disputes in their homes because they also have an income.
Ms. Zhen, who is divorced with two children to support, recounted a story of 'very low production' and hardships before she began to benefit from the project's support to her cooperative. With increased production, her livelihood has significantly improved, and she encourages poor farmers to become commercial producers and join the cooperative. With pride, she informed the mission that last year (2016), she was selected as a people's representative for the county, and finally, she shared that being empowered and successful, she now has many suitors and can be more selective this time around!
And in a photo that eerily echoed the mission's concerns about the sustained inclusion of IFAD's target group in cooperatives, a woman smallholder farmer (indicated by the arrow) in Leye County stood aside as the cooperative boss engaged with mission members.

This image was used in the mission's presentation during the wrap-up workshop to emphasize IFAD's recommendation for continued support to cooperatives to remain inclusive after the closing of the project.

In conclusion, the GIADP project performed well on gender, but was not without challenges. Clear successes, shortfalls and everything in between should provide for valuable lessons and further reflection for the country programme going forward. GIADP is one of the projects selected for an IFAD ex-post impact assessment, and no doubt the additional data will help us glean further insights and conclusions.
Until then,
Thanks for reading!

The Guangxi Integrated Agriculture Development Project (GIADP) in China became effective in 2012 and completed on 31 March 2017. Covering eight counties in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the project aimed to improve livelihoods of over 933,000 rural women and men, through production support, enhanced service delivery in extension and market access and improved community infrastructure. The total costs of GIADP was about USD 96.86 million, financed by an IFAD loan of SDR 29.65 million (about USD 47 million) and counterpart contributions including government financing of USD 46.4 million and beneficiaries’ contributions of an estimated USD 3.44 million.

GIADP completed with 99.8% of project funds invested, reached most of its targets and overall achievements are high. In total, 355.181 households and over 1.3 million rural men and women (1,339,189) benefited from project interventions

By Robert Delve and Laura Sollazzo

Have you ever heard about PlantWise, Plant Clinics or Plant Doctors?

As you can guess, it’s about plants, it’s about wanting to have healthy plants and it’s about reducing crop losses but mostly, it’s about sharing knowledge. Plantwise is a global initiative led by CABI focused on increasing rural households’ access to rural services, in this case agricultural extension services. Farmers often have nowhere to go to get advice about pests or diseases affecting their crops, as they don’t have regular or easy access to extension services. Plantwise brings these services closer to farmers by setting-up a regular venue staffed by trained extension specialists (Plant doctors) where farmers can get advice on their plant problem and best control measure. Plant clinics are set-up in local meeting places like markets, village squares and human health clinics.

To understand more about the pests and diseases that farmers face, to be able to track pest and disease outbreaks and to check on the recommendations given by the plant doctors, data is collected and then stored in an open-access Knowledge Bank database that is shared with national plant health partners working in research, government, national service offices, academics, and NGOs. Results have shown that 80% of farmers have increased their yields by consulting plant clinics.

To date, the Plantwise network covers countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia, with 1800 clinics, 5000 trained plant doctors and has reached 4.5 million farmers.

What Plantwise offers to IFAD’s target groups

In December 2016, at the end of the project implementation phase, the Policy & Technical Advisory Division of International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) conducted an After Action Review (AAR) on the performance of the IFAD’s support to CABI’s Plantwise programme and identified lessons and recommendations that can be used by the new CABI-led grant programme on “Integrating ICT Tools into Plantwise to Support More Effective Data Capture and Use” sponsored by the Research and Impact Assessment Division (RIA) of the IFAD's Strategy and Knowledge Department (SKD). Beyond the grant funding, PlantWise is complementing the investment projects in Uganda, Rwanda (specifically projects on water, rural income and agribusiness) and Mozambique to collect impact studies, expand plant clinic networks and support policy changes.

The AAR brought some recommendations and lessons that can be useful for the next IFAD team to consider developing with CABI during the implementation phase of the new grant programme. For one, increased reach can be achieved through innovations at clinic level such as mobile clinics to reach new areas, and plant nurses who allow more clients to be dealt with per session. The networks themselves can have growth opportunities through partnerships with government and NGOs who in becoming convinced of the approach, are willing to invest. Second, data management and use of ICT will enable plant doctors to enter the data directly into tablets to facilitate the timely sharing of information.

What are Plantwise results?

The main result in the three target countries of the first IFAD grant, exceeded the foreseen objectives in terms of numbers of plant doctors trained, plant clinics established and targeted farmers reached. For example, in Mozambique, 80 clinics were embedded in the IFAD investment projects which are many more than the planned nine clinics. Impact assessment have found that, PlantWise has created impact on yield increases, increased the use of non-chemical pesticides, increased household income after visiting a plant clinic and increased farmers linkages with private sector and farmers’ organizations. It was interesting to learn that the governments in Uganda and Rwanda have expanded the awareness of plant clinic through mass media. The Plantwise programme collaborated with the Platform for Agricultural Risk Management (PARM) housed in IFAD, to seek guidance for a timely response to pest management in Uganda and to carry-out a feasibility study on “Crop Pest and Disease Management in Uganda: Status and Investment needs”. The report was presented to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Livestock Industries (MAIF) and other stakeholders in a High level Workshop in Kampala on 29 November 2016 and has received support of Government officials and the interest of development partners. This report includes a technical and financial proposal to upgrade the plant health system in Uganda, and it includes several activities directly linked with PlantWise.

What happens now that the grant is completed?

For one, Plantwise would like to pursue its ambitions. The principle idea is to reach more farmers, expand its outreach in more countries and ensure food security through reduced crop losses to improve livelihoods. CABI is also thinking about reaching acceptable levels of sustainability by helping the participating countries take ownership of the programme themselves.

Lessons learned

One of the recommendations was to ensure that a better data collection method is put into place so that plant doctors can collect data electronically instead of filling in cumbersome forms which often take a long time to complete. In response to this gap, CABI informs that the next programme will explore the possibilities to develop a Data App to help improve data collection previously done manually. Similarly, information exchanges can be sent to plant doctors via tablets (see pilot experiences in Kenya) – an area the new grant promises to look into to evaluate the current ICT efficacies in each country for data collection and elaboration and learn from countries that are already using these technologies. Plant clinics should also include data and advisory services on post-harvest losses in addition to losses in its production stages.

The programme also highlights a few predominant pitfalls and challenges that might not be easy to adapt to, such as government requirements up-take of running costs for plant clinics, coping with institutional problems associated with high turn-over of extension and senior staff creating execution delays that could have been avoided if there would be more cooperation between different government departments. Also, clinic data can be viewed as trade-sensitive causing un-avoidable political pressures. It might be necessary to tailor to the country context explaining how the data is fed into the Knowledge Bank and how it is managed and used. The programme also identified the need for plant doctors to network with sources of diagnostic support as a first point of detection of new pests and pest outbreaks. The location of plant clinics might be another area to look into to include more strategic and remote areas such as outside the market place or in agricultural service hubs. Perhaps, in the next project, mitigation measures can be explored to overcome these pitfalls that the previous grant is now teaching us.

Plantwise in the News, something IFAD is proud of

Last month, CABI won two prestigious Awards: (1) the Bond Development Award for Innovation, which was granted for Plantwise’s initiative for implementing inventive approaches to adapt to complex and changing external environments and (2) the St. Andrew’s Prize for the Environment, which recognizes significant contributions to environmental conservation. The prize money will be used to scale up Plantwise digital tools and applications in order to make quicker and better diagnoses and recommendations by improving the speed of data collection and analysis.

IFAD is proud to be associated with the donor group supporting PlantWise and commends Plantwise for its work in improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers through development of sustainable agricultural practices on a global scale.

Contacts:

RobertDelve

WafaaEl-Khoury

By Manda. M. Sissoko*, Lisandro Martin* and Natalia Toschi

Transparency implies pro-activity

Two words define transparency in the context of development: openness and sharing. Transparency is about creating access to timely, reliable, comprehensive and comparable data on development aid resource management. It should be clear how much aid is flowing into a country, where and how aid is spent, and what results are achieved.

However, openness is only one dimension of transparency. The other is sharing lessons and knowledge about what works to support decision-making on the allocation and management of development aid resources. While openness sets the stage, sharing determines the true dynamics of transparency. These words explain colloquially the core of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) standard.

Becoming truly transparent is expensive: it requires investments in capacity and systems. But the dividends are high, and in the long run, significantly outweigh costs. In this sense, the availability and ease of access to aid information are simply the means. Organizations are called on to adopt transparency standards into their operations and processes for the aim of achieving better development results.

Transparency is a transformational force

The main reason transparency matters is that it alters traditional accountability relations among development actors. With open and easily accessible information, citizens can actively participate in policy-making regarding their futures and gain ownership over their development aspirations. Informed citizens are conscious of their needs, they are empowered to hold their governments –and organizations like IFAD- accountable for their decisions, and can influence those decisions. Likewise, timely and accessible information on future planning and flows of development financing helps donors and recipients to hold each other to account for mutual commitments. Transparency, therefore, enhances national awareness of the results achieved from aid resources and strengthens "Mutual Accountability." Finally, the comparability and comprehensiveness of information shared forms the basis for coordination and harmonization of country-level development partners' activities.

At IFAD

The IFAD11 business model recognizes that transparency is perhaps the most transformational of all the elements of a results culture. The Fund has a long history of disclosure, and in 2010, adopted the principle of presumption of full disclosure policy. The latest business model, presented at IFAD11 Replenishment Consultation last June, proposed for IFAD11 (2019-2021) to increase the importance of transparency in all of IFAD's operations at a corporate and operational level. IFAD Management stated that "considerably more weight will be given, organization-wide, to transparency." Transparency and Openness Action Plan is currently being developed for approval by the Executive Board in December 2017. As part of this plan, phase I of IFAD's automatic publishing to IATI has concluded, a significant step in making the Fund fully compliant with the IATI standard. Now, information about the Fund's approvals and disbursements is provided to IATI automatically and in real-time. A small but significant step to amplify IFAD's contributions to development results.

By Ivan Cossio, Rima Alcadi, Julie Danskin

The notion of the IFAD Grant of the Year Awards was introduced as part of the 2015 IFAD Grant Policy, as a means by which IFAD intends to expand its knowledge and experience to enrich its lending operations, advisory services and knowledge products. The IFAD grant of the year award is awarded jointly to the IFAD grant sponsor and the grant recipient. IFAD has introduced 4 categories of Grant Awards: (a) Good Practice in Design; (b) Impact on Poverty Reduction; (c) Knowledge Sharing and (d) Innovation.

As the Grant Policy became effective in 2016, the 2016 IFAD Grant Awards were the first grant awards ever. The IFAD grants award committee was composed of 6 members: Sheila Mwanundu and Luisa Migliaccio from PMD, Torben Nilsson from SKD, Hazel Bedford from COM, Federica Cerulli from PRM and the Vice President, who was the Committee's Chair. QAG staff (Ivan Cossio, Rima Alcadi and Julie Danskin) acted as Secretary to the committee.

Those of you who assisted the Grants Award Ceremony yesterday know who the winning grants were. However, you may not know that very few grants were shortlisted - only between 3 and 5 for each award category. All grants shortlisted were impressive, in their own unique way, and choosing the one grant to award has not been an easy task. We tried to be as objective as possible in the selection process, basing ourselves on predefined criteria. It would be remiss of us not to pass on this information: in reality all grants shortlisted deserved an award.

Having said that, for those of you who were not at the ceremony, let us update you on the winning grants:

Good Practice in Design: this award went to the grant programme "Improve Dryland Livelihoods in Djibouti and Somalia through Productivity-enhancing Technologies," sponsored by Kaushik Barua. The proposal was developed by the consortium led by the private company Transtec with Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Suisse (VSF); and the School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences, of the Bern University of Applied Sciences (HAFL) - who were competitively selected. For the first time, specific annexes on financial governance and the selection process were added to the President's Report to reassure the EB: a best practice that is now being replicated for all private sector recipients. Co-financing of 100% was mobilized.

Impact on Poverty Reduction: this award went to the grant programme "Strengthening the Productive and Organizational Model of the Cooperativa Integral Agrícola Mujeres 4Pinos - Phase II", sponsored by Juan Diego Ruiz Cumplido. This small grant is making a big difference to the lives of indigenous women in Guatemala. In the past five years, the number of members has increased from 175 to 450 and 450 jobs have been created. Their production and sales figures have risen steadily: from US$770,000 in 2011 to over US$3.6 million in 2016. Without doubt, one of the transformative achievements of the cooperative is that, in less than three years, 70% of their members have increased their incomes to the extent that they are no longer living in poverty.

Knowledge Sharing: this award went to the PROCASUR grant "Strengthening Knowledge Sharing and Scaling up of Sustainable Innovation Using Learning Route Methodology - Phase II", sponsored by Benoit Thierry. The programme enhanced learning, sharing and innovation within the Asia and Pacific Region based on three core elements: 1) Mapping and packaging local solutions into live-field trainings, guided by farmers and government officials, 2) Building on the capacity of IFAD-supported projects and partner institutions to expand the use of the Learning Routes Methodology, 3) Enabling rural entrepreneurs/local champions to perform as peer to peer trainers and technical assistants, recognised by the government. Thanks to the engagement of provincial government decision makers and leaders from the Women´s and Farmers´ Unions, Innovation Plans were designed through Learning Routes benefitting over 47,000 rural people.

Innovation: this award went to the grant to Fundacion ACUA for the "Programme to Increase the Visibility and Strengthen the Entrepreneurship of Rural Afro-descendant Communities in Latin America," sponsored by Jesus Quintana. The aim of this regional grant was to overcome the social inequalities facing afro-descendants, who are among the most vulnerable populations in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. By the end of the grant, the income generated by the 44 afro-descendant entrepreneurs supported increased by nearly 50%, and 22 of their products have penetrated the national markets - for example a pesto made of aromatic herbs and a flour made of an indigenous vegetable. In collaboration with Slow Food organization, a tourist gastronomic route has been established. Thanks to our collaboration with Fundación ACUA, IFAD is now one of the most prominent development agencies to support directly Afro-descendant communities.

As was stated by the Vice President in his introductory remarks, through this process, we gained a deeper appreciation for the results and impact that we are achieving through our grants portfolio. We also saw how much energy staff members are investing in managing these grants. Our deep appreciation goes to these committed IFAD staff members who are sponsoring these grants - going through a tough and rigorous screening and review process, reporting, supervising and sharing the resulting knowledge. Through this exercise, it was indeed evident that there are some very valuable jewels in our grants portfolio.

We already look forward to start working on the 2017 Grant Awards soon! Please do leave your comments on how you think this process can be improved.

By Laura Carnevali, Anna Pierobon, Raniya Sayed Khan and Lisandro Martin

Big goals and big gaps

In the global efforts towards achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the development community and governments have agreed on over 230 indicators to track progress. Tracking is needed for informed decision making. First, robust tracking is essential in finding solutions to challenges that are dynamic, such as those caused by climate change; for example, climate resilient agriculture is a moving target as climate patterns continue to mutate. Second, tracking is essential in adapting global solutions to specific contexts, addressing root causes of fragility has for example cultural elements. Thirdly, without robust data, governments and development partners cannot assess the trade-offs of pursuing multiple goals: more aggressive growth requires more energy and water, and can endanger forests.

So when development agencies talk about building capacity to monitor the SDGs, they are in fact implying much more than bean-counting. It is about instilling a culture of results that enables governments and development partners to learn from project implementation, to make timely mid-course corrections, and to refine the propose solutions regularly, moving away from rigid blueprints. It is ultimately about connecting measurement with management to do development differently. This is one of the pillars of the proposed new business model for IFAD.

Given these global partnerships, doing development differently requires that adequate capacity to track results is built for all stakeholders. At the base of the pyramid are Governments, the foundation of the global data architecture to manage towards the SDG targets. In the middle layer, development partners must be able to consume country-level data to fine-tune their services and provide more effective solutions; and to be accountable to beneficiaries and taxpayers for their own contributions. At the top, global leaders must inform policy and multi-stakeholder dialogues with evidence. Unfortunately this pyramid is shaky. We all recognize that efforts must be made to improve data at their source through direct support to governments to build M&E capacities. This is where the Program in Rural M&E (PRiME) comes into play.

Transforming reality

IFAD’s Results Management Framework (RMF) includes 21 indicators directly linked to seven SDGs. Data sources for these measures are both UN and IFAD databases, which draw data from IFAD’s projects.

But is the data of the right quality, and is it used for the right purpose? To answer this question, IFAD conducted a survey among M&E officers working in IFAD-supported projects. Three main problems emerged:

• M&E data is not leveraged enough – Responses indicated that M&E data is not used for decision-making. Over 90 per cent of project officers use M&E data merely for generating monitoring reports for different stakeholders rather than providing substantive inputs into managerial decisions.

• Data collected is not helpful – Roughly 50 per cent believe that collected data are incorrect and that tracking is requested on too many indicators that do not support meaningful conclusions. Similar weaknesses emerge in their type and relevance: 60 per cent of respondents believe that projects do not always include “SMART” indicators and, if so, they are not appropriate to measure projects’ objectives.

• M&E staff is not making the difference – People performing M&E functions in rural development projects don’t feel that they have the right capacities, exposure or authority to be able to have an impact on how decisions are made within their projects.

Consequently, there is evidence that current efforts to track results must be stepped up. Numbers are being produced; transforming reality based on those numbers is a different matter.

A new mindset

IFAD has partnered with The Centres for Learning on Evaluation and Results (CLEAR) in creating PRiME to systematically train project staff to instil a culture of results in project management units. Transforming resources into results is another key area of IFAD’s new business model.

To this end, this week, 50 individuals from 46 different countries performing a variety of roles (from M&E officers, to project directors and M&E assistants) gathered in Rome to take part in the first ever training on Fundamentals of M&E in rural development. The customized curriculum is an adaptation of a classroom-style training that incorporates peer-to-peer learning, experience sharing and learning theory through practice.

For more information visit the following links:

CLEAR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiUgv6gpy3U

New Business Model: https://webapps.ifad.org/members/repl/11/02/docs/IFAD11-2-R-3.pdf

By Christopher Neglia

At a standing room only event held on Wednesday morning at the Committee on World Food Security (CFS44), speakers and audience members were asked how their respective organizations could ‘Walk the Talk’ in the fight against climate change (some on the panel joked that in the UN we are more adept at the latter). This entreaty arose from a set of recommendations issued in 2012 by the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE), which had called for more integration of climate change concerns in policies and programmes that addressed food security and national agricultural sectors.

Recalling the recommendations adopted at CFS39, the Chair of the HLPE Steering Committee, M.Patrick Caron noted that demonstrable progress has been made in the last five years. Under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) we now have the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). We also have the Paris Agreement, and its financial mechanism, the Green Climate Fund (GCF). We are starting to see climate change concerns integrated in food security policies at the national level, explicitly supporting the resilience of vulnerable groups and food systems.

Delphine Borione ©FAO/Riccardo De Luca

First to speak on the panel, French Ambassador Mrs. Delphine Borione underlined the potential of France’s four per 1000 Initiative, whose basic tenet is that by increasing by four percent the carbon storage in the world’s soils we can greatly offset the annual increase of CO2 into the atmosphere. She also pointed to efforts to reduce carbon emissions in France’s livestock sector by 15 per cent.

‘We’re combining conditions under climate change with food systems…we need innovation and a transition to organizing new models of land use for growth and employment,’ French Ambassador Mrs. Borione said.

Hassan Abouyoub ©FAO/Riccardo De Luca

Similarly, the Ambassador of Morocco, M. Hassan Abouyoub, described his country’s efforts to reorganize society due to chronic water scarcity, pointing out that agriculture consumes about three quarters of water resources. He emphasized the role education plays in influencing policy outcomes.

‘We can’t implement policies rationally and efficiently if we don’t teach this in our educational system and have sound evidence present in our decision-making,’ Ambassador of Morocco M. Abouyoub said.

Faris Ahmed ©FAO/Riccardo De Luca

At the international level, M. Faris Ahmed of USC Canada, representing the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) of the CFS, recognized the inherent difficulties of addressing climate change through agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors.

‘Our sectors are so diverse that it’s hard to bring them together,’ Ahmed proffered.

These constituencies tend to be the most affected by climate change, while they are also the least consulted. In this context, M. Ahmed underlined the strong human rights foundation of the CFS; an orientation that he said should be applied when engaging stakeholders in climate change action.

Martin Frick ©FAO/Riccardo De Luca

Picking up on this point, FAO’s Director of the Climate and Environment Division, M. Martin Frick, advocated for greater land rights for women, both as a matter of social and economic justice, and as a means of improving agricultural production without increasing the environmental footprint of small farming systems.

On the state of the CFS, M. Martin Frick struck a note of optimism, saying that after 21 years of UNFCCC negotiations, member states had finally accepted that agriculture had a role in climate change debates. M. Frick called for research programmes led by the Rome-based Agencies of the UN to project climate change impacts on agriculture in a much more granular way, primarily as a means of better serving member states.

For those of us who work with these issues every day, reflecting on where the CFS was five years ago provided a useful contrast to the complex policy architecture that has evolved in the intervening years. This bolsters the prospect that climate action will accelerate further as we approach 2020, when the Paris agreement comes into force.

Margarita Astralaga ©FAO/Riccardo De Luca

IFAD's Director of the Climate and Environment Division, Mrs. Margarita Astralaga, who moderated the event, explained that there are still major logistical challenges that relate to monitoring policy outcomes, which is necessary to better understand the role of agriculture in fighting climate change.

'For developing countries, measuring policies and programmes will require a massive effort as they must account for actions detailed in their NDCs as part of the global stocktake exercise, a key element of the Paris Agreement,' explained Astralaga.

Amassador Abouyoub agreed that monitoring is an essential component that feeds into the Paris Agreement’s ambition mechanism, and he called for more capacity-building in this area that would support generating better data on the feasibility of climate risk management.

Nevertheless, in this event the CFS demonstrated its relevance as a forum that reinforces integration of food security and climate change issues, making good on demands by member states for support as they deal with a complex and interrelated set of challenges.

Written by Maria Hartl, Senior Technical Specialist, Gender and Social Equity

In September,IFAD hosted an Expert Group Meeting convened by UN-Women to discuss “Challenges and opportunities in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls”. The meeting was held in collaboration with the Rome-based agencies to prepare for the priority theme of the 62nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in 2018.

While IFAD and the RBAs always contribute actively to the annual sessions of the CSW, they are particularly engaged in preparation for the 2018 priority theme of rural women. Collaboration with UN Women on the organization of the Expert Group Meeting and hosting it was a good opportunity to bring the UN and the global debates to IFAD HQ and to enable many colleagues inside and outside IFAD to be part of the discussions.

Photo: Beatrice Gerli, IFAD Rome 2017

With the overall objective of accelerating the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of all rural women and girls, the EGM assessed three broad, interlinked areas that are critical for rural women’s and girls’ livelihoods, wellbeing, and climate resilience in the context of rural transformation:

• Rights to an adequate standard of living and ensuring income security and social protection

• Rights to food and ensuring food security and nutrition

• Rights to land and productive resources and ensuring land tenure security

A total of 22 experts participated with a wide diversity of profiles: researchers, feminists, international NGOs workers, private sector workers and representatives of farmer organizations (see full list of experts here). The meeting included many partners and collaborators of IFAD, with whom we have worked on many topics.

Ruth Meinzen-Dick from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is an important long-term partner of IFAD who has taken the lead on the ground-breaking Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI).

Reema Nanavaty of the Self Employed Women's Association (India) and Esther Penunia of the Asian Farmers’ Association who are active members and leaders of IFAD’s Farmers’ Forum and have inspired our work in IFAD with so many innovations over the years.

Barbara Van Koppen from the International Water Management Institute presented a summary of substantive work on women and water. Her expert knowledge on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and Multiple Use (Water) Services (MUS) has played a vital role in keeping the IFAD approach on water and gender up to date.

Marc Wegerif from Oxfam International was also able to catch up on the gender and lang rights with colleagues in ILC and PTA, who work closely with him.

Amon Chinyophiro ofMeramo Consulting, one of the champions of the Gender Action Learning System and the Household Methodologies came from Malawi to talk about food and nutrition security. He has seen huge successes in addressing farmers' economic and gender challenges since the National Smallholder Farmers' Association of Malawi started promoting the GALS in 2013. This motivated him to pilot GALS in expanding the adoption of good agricultural practices in the groundnut value chain to increase farmers' incomes.

“It was a big opportunity to be the man among women. I learnt how such “women-only-gatherings” provide the rare opportunity for them to effectively communicate their concerns with minimal interruption. I appreciated the goodwill that the female experts have towards rural women. The rural woman has always operated in a world that is unfair for her meaningful survival; now is the time to address all injustices in her life.”

Mame Khary Diene, founder and CEO of Bioessence Laboraties, Senegal, represented the private sector and the importance of market-oriented and value chain approaches to empower rural women. Mame is a business partner of women producers in IFAD-supported projects in Senegal, supporting them in standardization, processing and packing of their products and receiving certification. She came with a vision of a profitable business and suggested that we change our perception and representation of agriculture:

“I am the only one coming from the private sector here. Moving from agriculture to agri-business will change things in favour of rural women and youth. Our image of the private sector is always linked to multinationals, while there is plenty of private sector at national or regional level. We must not be afraid of talking about money, this is how agriculture will attract young people. We need to revamp and re-skin agriculture and leave that image of a very poor agriculture that cannot even feed its own people.”

Jane Meriwas, Executive Director, Samburu Women Trust could not reach Rome but participated online with her team as representatives of indigenous people, women and girls. Jane had also attended the Indigenous People’s Forum organized by IFAD. She shared the challenges of rural indigenous women and girls in the drylands of Kenya and ways to support their livelihoods.

The expert group included Christian Mendoza, a young female expert from the Instituto de Liderazgo Simone de Beauvoir, Mexico who shared at the end of the meeting:

“It´s been an honour for me to attend this meeting with such an important group of experienced women in this topic. I was able to learn about their research and careers and I feel grateful about it. As a young feminist, I think we need to be more informed and connected with rural women regarding their important role in the subsistence of life and natural resources.”

Last not least, we welcomed our former colleague Clare Bishop in her new role as independent expert presenting the main findings from an FAO online discussion on “Rural women: striving for gender transformative impacts”.

As host, IFAD, together with the RBAs, UN Women, OECD, UNIDO, UNESCO, WHO and ILO were given the opportunity to attend as observers. It was a great occasion to learn from the experts and we were able to contribute our experiences. Without doubt the focus on rural women and girls will be crucial to achieving the 2030 Agenda and the global challenges of zero hunger.

We thank everyone who participated in the Exert Group Meeting – particularly those of you we haven’t been able to mention by name – and our colleagues in UN Women, FAO and WFP for the collaboration. We are looking forward to continuing to work with them in the lead up to the CSW 2018.

Read more and find the various papers from the experts here http://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/csw62-2018/preparations/expert-group-meeting

9^thOctober 2017, Nairobi - Kenya

Procasur Africa's Learning Route: Linking smallholders to commercialization Practices: The case of Farmers Organizations in the Kenyan dairy sectorbrought together 21 participants from 6 different countries implementing six different IFAD funded projects - Cameroon (Agricultural Development Support Project-PADFA) and Du Conseil d’Administration), Kenya (Smallholder Dairy Commercialization Programme, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries), Malawi (Sustainable Agricultural Production Programme and Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development), Rwanda (Rwanda Dairy Development Project-RDDP and Nyagatare Dairy Farmers Union-NDFU), Ghana (Rural Enterprises Programme-REP)and Madagascar (Program for Vocational Training and Improvement of Agricultural Productivity-FORMAPROD and Malagasy Dairy Board MDB). Each country bringing diversity and innovative analysis to play. Thanks to the structure of each group, bringing a mix of project staff, government representatives, leaders of farmers organizations and small scale farmers the participants had the opportunity to see the two case studies from the Kenyan dairy sector through a variety of analytical frameworks.

During a Learning Route participants get together in a practical and interactive setting that promotes direct and active learning, and allows the host country, in this case Kenya, to share their best practices, innovative tools, techniques, and approaches as they promote smallholder commercialization initiatives. During the past week, the different IFAD funded projects put all their analytical focus on dairy value chains, and how the host organizations have successfully contributed towards integrating smallholder farmers into commercialization through the cooperative model. Through a mix of both theory (workshop presentations) and practical field experiences from selected cases in Uasin Gishu and Nyandarua counties of Kenya each participant had the opportunity to look at the different innovative possibilities for their own projects.

In Kenya the participants will have the opportunity to use different analytical knowledge management and team building exercises from which they will not only take t the theoretical outcomes but also the knowledge of how to work in a group towards innovative outcomes. On day one they were taken through an induction process where together with Procasur they established the learning objectives and had the possibility to be introduced to the whole team.

The morning was opened by a distinguished guest, Dr. Kiptarus: Director of livestock production: State Department of Livestock Kenya. Who welcomed the participant to the Learning Route. During his opening speech he provided the group with key highlights about the dairy sector in Kenya. Dr kiptarus key points included his emphatic remarks about commercialization of agricultural activities as the engine of economic development in Africa and particularly in Kenya given that smallholders farmers constitute 80% of marketed agricultural products. His speech also gave the participants important facts about the dairy sub-sector and its rapid growth while reminding them that the current growth does not match the projected demand for dairy products. Mr Kiptarus also made a call for innovative approaches that will guarantee transformation of the dairy sector from subsistence farming to viable sustainable commercial oriented enterprises. This was the first speech of the morning and it already set the tone for participants to think deeper about farmer organizations and how if they are run efficiently through systems that will link smallholder farmers to commercialization they can be the engine of agricultural development.

Currently, the government of Kenya is investing in promoting production, production efficiency, and sustainable use of land resources and creation of market linkages for farmers. By doing this, the government has put in place interventions that focus on policy and regulatory environment, strengthening of farmer organizations, increasing of livestock productivity and increasing market linkages for milk and dairy products.

During the first day Gerald Katothya introduced himself as the technical coordinator of the Learning Route. Gerald described the Learning Route process as a platform that exposes participants to practical aspects of a process with the aim of understanding what makes it work and learn from it. The Learning Route in Kenya aims at improving the understanding of the visiting participants on how to strengthen farmer organizations capacities aimed at integrating smallholder farmers into commercialization modes. This goals are to be achieved through activities and tools like the case analysis framework. Which is to act as a guide for understanding the internal organization and governance structures of farmer organizations and other coordination mechanisms that link farmers to commercialization, dairy commercialization service delivery models and interventions applied by dairy development programs to strengthen farmer organizations.

Already before lunch all participants found themselves involved in an interesting dialogue with Norbert Tuyishime. Norbert shared the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation (EAFF)experience as a regional farmer organization engaged in policy and political dialogue processes. The EAFF supports its member countries through apex farmer organizations to participate in discussions around regional policies and protocols, participation in agricultural budget analysis processes and influencing on the regional trade policies and standards.

Catherine Kilelu, Project Manager for the Wageningen University 3R project in Kenya, was able to share with the participants of the Learning Route 3R’s experiences and their trade and investment approach to commercialization of the dairy sector by supporting dairy smallholder farmers to conduct farming as a business, integrate farmers into markets and strengthening the competitiveness and sustainability of the smallholder farmers. 3R also promotes the adoption of dairy technologies. She noted that, though the Kenyan dairy sector is very advanced compared to peers in the region, it still faces by a myriad of challenges and so there is space for innovations. Some of the challenges Katherine mentioned include: high cost of production, milk quality and safety issues, gender and social exclusion and climate change, among others. In order to build entrepreneurial capacities for dairy smallholder farmers 3R believes there is a need to: develop relevant business models, develop youth led dairy models, develop dairy business models, develop quality based milk payment system, establish practical training centres and promote low emission resilient production systems. The model is also advocating for the promotion of technologies that are promising for both the youth and women.

Procasur as an organization that acts as a knowledge broker for the South and its main mandate is to identify best practices and facilitate knowledge sharing. During the Learning Route, Procasur expects the participants to share experiences and learn from the Kenyan cases through a process of analyzing the innovative solutions and evaluating them against what is applicable in their context. The ideal is to establish together with every team what can be adopted and adapted when back in their countries.

The learning Route participants first destination was Kinangop (Nyandarua county) in the central region of Kenya each IFAD funded project was called to present their projects, share their experiences on the LR topic and their expectations of the training through an activity called the experiences fair.At the end of the session ,many participants shared how, for them, the value of the activity is in discovering how the challenges affecting smallholder farmers in Africa are often similar and crosscutting in the region. Often revolving around high cost of production, climate change, and challenges with accessing finances, lack of training, poor infrastructure among others.

In this Learning Route where all participants are members of IFAD funded projects, each project was able to communicate to the different countries the efforts IFAD is making, in collaboration with other partners and including respective country governments, to contribute to poverty reduction, food and nutrition security. Common and cutting across interventions include among others: capacity building and training, adaptive research, commercialization, market linkages creation, capacity enhancement in good agricultural practices and enhancement of competitiveness

Finally, we want to share some of the main expectations that were expressed by the participants of the Learning Route during the first day of our journey through knowledge:

Sharing of experiences and establishing reasons for success and or failure with the case studies
Understanding some of the sustainable funding mechanisms for farmer organizations in Kenya
Understanding the process of reducing the cost of production at farmer level
Understanding how farmer organizations in Kenya deal with governance and management issues
Gaining an understanding on how farmer organizations were being supported through public private partnerships
Gaining an understanding on the innovative approaches used by framer organizations to ensure their growth and sustainability
Finally, understand how farmer organizations are organized in Kenya achieving effective service delivery to members including facilitating the access to markets and marketing allied complementary activities.

PROCASUR, the participants and the hosts of the LR are committed to facilitate and contribute during the next days to the activities and the development of each country's innovation plan allowing the lessons learned in Kenya to be adapted and replicated in different countries and contexts.

Experiences from the IFAD-ESA Monitoring and Evaluation Workshop in Swaziland

Author: Tirelo Ditshipi - (with contributions from Francesco Rubino)

The Agricultural Services Support Project (ASSP) in Botswana, a five year project in the Department of Crop Production, the Ministry of Agricultural Development & Food Security was envisaged as model project to support existing government efforts towards improved food security and improving rural livelihoods.

As its name suggests, the support aspect is meant to fill existing gaps in programmes such as the Integrated Support Programme for Arable Agriculture Development (ISPAAD), in addition to introducing new technologies and strengthening capacity building in the ministry’s structures.

To enhance these technologies, the project also provided equipment and assisted the implementers of the project in performing their duties through the provision of transport and office equipment.

Additionally, through the institutional strengthening component, the project went a step further by enhancing the ministry’s training capacity on Monitoring & Evaluation and Knowledge Management & Learning, helping to align the project’s mandate to that of the Ministry’s.

While the project made great strides in terms of capacity building, it emerged from the recent Sub-Regional Monitoring & Evaluation Workshop (May 16-19) in Manzini (Swaziland), in which five countries participated, that Botswana has and could learn valuable lessons on what needs to be in place for the success of the project. The underlying factor was that Monitoring & Evaluation is the backbone of the project and that it influences the outcome of an effective Knowledge Management &Learning system and that these need to be established during the initial phases of the project. Despite thee being just a few months until the project’s closure, following a one year extension, such lessons will prove to be quite useful in terms application to future projects. In this regard, ASSP will be a reference point in what needs to be done and in place to set up a Monitoring & Evaluation system and eventually influence the strengths of other areas of the project.

As Knowledge Management & Learning Officers we realized that more can be done on that area in the Sub-Region IFAD funded projects. Particularly that Knowledge Management is at times not fully explored, with the risk of being at times underplayed by a strict focus on communications. The main reason behind this gap is the difficulty most officers face in the establishment of Knowledge Management systems for their projects, as a result of the lack of capacity and understanding of what needs to be done to set up the systems. A difficulty that ASSP has faced in its project implementation, as well

One other key lessons for the ASSP project, as evidenced by presentations from participating countries was the importance of data collection as a way of building on stories to tell and share either positive or negative for future reference. Fortunately for the ASSP project, through the Division of Agricultural Information & Public Relations, in-house channels through both print and broadcast are available to tap into. It is through such channels that the conservation agriculture initiative and the use of Agricultural Service Centres (ASCs) for farmers’ access to services could be examples of sharing lessons and proving that lives have been transformed through such interventions.

In addition to having a good foundation on intersecting areas such as Monitoring & Evaluation and Knowledge Management & Learning it is important that component drivers understand that there is a shared responsibility in making these work together. An important lesson,therefore, is that technical experts in every project need to understand the importance of data collection, storage and sharing for optimal use and visibility of the project, a responsibility that has to be owned by all participants in a project to ensure its success.

As a Knowledge Management and Communications specialist myself, it has become evident that I have to constantly remind my team of the importance of documenting their efforts in their respective areas for archiving and visibility of the project for improved impact.

Documentation and case studies are a reflection of a project’s success, or even failures, that are key in moving forward by assessing what can be done differently moving forward. In this regard, as Botswana prepares for a new project with new components and exploring different sectors, a good base needs to be established. As an immediate intervention, ASSP will archive all the information particularly on stories from the field and radio interviews on the project and its various components to showcase its impact.

A documentary on ASCs and their effectiveness in attempting to address inaccessibility of facilities for farmers by acting as one stop shops has already been conceptualized with the Broadcasting Unit in the Information Division.Three centers have already been visited and have provided clips, with subsequent interviews planned.

Regarding the project’s beneficiaries of conservation agriculture, selected farmers and beneficiaries of the Waste Water Irrigation Scheme, profiles must be compiled for ease of reference in and traceability of the beneficiaries in the future. Targeted messages on the interventions or technologies that ASSP utilized, including different techniques of conservation agriculture such as basin preparations or ripping have to be produced. In addition, ASSPs regional collaborations should be strengthened with organizations like the African Conservation Tillage Network, for example, by starting to contribute to their monthly newsletter on conservation agriculture in the region.

In conclusion, the Monitoring & Evaluation sub-regional workshop has in many ways provided answers on how to “get it right” and continued collaboration with participating countries is key. ASSP took a keen interest in collaboration with groups that have made significant progress in Knowledge Management, such as, RLEEP in Malawi who have compiled their stories from the field and PROSUL in Mozambique whose project is similar to the one currently being designed for Botswana and the Wool and Mohair Promotion Project in Lesotho. ASSP will take advantage of the established social--What sap group: IFAD Monitoring & Evaluation - Southern Africa group, for sharing lessons which is already proving to be a useful platform.

By Samir Rayess Calvo

H.E. Dr Kaba Urgessa (State Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources) and Ato Aytenew Endeishaw (Deputy Head of Bureau of Agriculture in Amhara Region), inaugurated the irrigation scheme at Amhara Regional State.

The second phase of the Participatory Small-scale Irrigation Development Programme (PASIDP II) became effective on 13th February 2017. Building on the lessons from the previous phase, PASIDP II aims to develop 18,400 ha of small-scale irrigation schemes and 60,000 ha of adjacent watersheds, directly benefitting 108,750 households in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia and SNNPR regions. By improving their prosperity, food security and nutrition, farmers enhance their resilience against external shocks, including those induced by adverse weather and climate change. PASIDP II places great effort on enhancing smallholders’ access to markets by ensuring schemes’ financial viability and developing agribusiness linkages through training in agribusiness skills for all the participating farmers. Furthermore, the programme has increased efforts in making the irrigation schemes climate resilient through a landscape approach to watershed management, ensuring that irrigation command areas and downstream private and public facilities are protected. In this regard, the programme benefits from a USD 11 million grant sourced from IFAD’s Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) Trust Fund.

On the 13th October 2017, a mission comprising PASIDP II staff, Steering Committee members of PASDIP II and IFAD visited the project area in the Amhara Regional State. On this occasion, the irrigation scheme in the Special Zone of Oromia in Amhara region (Jille Timuga Woreda) was inaugurated by H.E. Dr Kaba Urgessa (State Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources) and Ato Aytenew Endeishaw (Deputy Head of Bureau of Agriculture). The scheme, was the first scheme to be finalized in the second phase of the programme. A total of 240 watershed committee members and 97 Irrigation Users Association members are the backbone of the scheme’s operation and sustainability, ensuring adequate conservation of the adjacent watershed and operation and maintenance of the scheme’s physical infrastructure. Obtaining water resources from Sewer river diversion, the scheme will irrigate 97 HA of land, benefiting 115 households (from which 23 are female-headed).

Thanks to the financial support from ASAP, the Regional Project Coordination Management Unit specialists have provided training on watershed management to 11 community watershed members, 8 Kebele (local administration) watershed committee members and 6 woreda (district) technical committee members.

H.E. Dr Kaba Urgessa (State Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources) and Ato Aytenew Endeishaw (Deputy Head of Bureau of Agriculture) inaugurating the irrigation scheme

H.E. Dr Kaba Urgessa acknowledged the commitment of the regional government and particularly the villagers who hosted the field visit, and encouraged the stakeholders to develop irrigation in the area and work towards prosperity. The Deputy Head of Bureau Agriculture promised to provide all the necessary support needed and appreciated the commitment from all actors in the area.

The inauguration was followed by an interactive session in which the zonal head and PASDIP II irrigation engineer gave a brief presentation about the scheme, acknowledging the active involvement of all actors throughout the development of the scheme. Key stakeholders and irrigation users engaged in a fruitful discussion, appreciated the presence of the State Minister in the field visit and committed to strengthen their efforts to develop sustainable irrigation schemes. The Programme National Coordinator provided guidance for the key actors in the woreda and farmers to work towards the innovative features of the second phase of the programme, highlighting the importance of considering farming as business and rehabilitate the surrounding watershed in the area to sustain the irrigation schemes.

Field visit and interaction with farmers

At the end of the field visit, the Zonal Head offered the traditional costume of the area as a present to the key stakeholders, including IFAD, in recognition of their support to the farmers in the area.

H.E. Dr Kaba Urgessa and Aytenew wearing the present given form the Zonal Head

by Francesca Romana Borgia

Documenting good practices, gathering data, updating baselines, and analysing documents are great ways of deepening the knowledge and performance of IFAD operations, but often projects lack time and the time and resources to do it. Meanwhile, hundreds of students around the world are enrolled in universities studying Development and competing for jobs in an industry where field experience is key.

Based on the interest expressed by IFAD projects to host students to help them collect and analyse data, IFAD entered into a strategic partnership with a network of universities. The Global Association of Master’s in Development Practice (MDP) was competitively selected from over twenty universities and university consortia that applied for the grant financing for this initiative. This network comprises 34 universities/higher education institutes that are located both in the Global North and Global South. The Masters attracts both young and seasoned students with previous work experience who bring their own expertise to the research. The grant design allows IFAD projects and partners (IFAD grant recipients or implementers of IFAD projects) to agree with the student on a specific deliverable (e.g. an action plan, baseline, database, etc.) that will be presented at the end of the three to six month field experience.

The IFAD-Universities win-win grant benefits both IFAD operations and universities in four different ways:

IFAD project teams benefit from additional analytical work carried out by passionate and competent students
Universities can offer their students the opportunity of having field experience with an international specialized UN agency/IFI
students can get hands-on experience and exposure to the work of IFAD
IFAD as an institution gets more visibility and impact as a learning institution and attract qualified students who are at the beginning of their development careers.

The IFAD grant funds a scholarship of up to US$5,000 to students who are citizens of borrowing members of IFAD studying in Global South universities of the Global Association and aims at building local talent. Since its kick-off in 2016, twenty-six students have been matched to IFAD projects and partners requests for research. So far, twelve have already completed their field experience, mostly in projects located in East and Southern Africa, five are still in the field and nine more will reach field destinations between now and the end of the year.

Pictures courtesy of: Andres Felipe Morales. Andres is the first person from the left in the bottom right-corner picture

Among those who had recently finished their dissertation there is Andrés, a Colombian citizen enrolled in the MDP at the Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia. Andrés spent three months in Jordan hosted by the Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation, which implements the Rural Economic Growth and Employment Project (REGEP). He developed a feasibility study and an action plan to strengthen the linkages between producers of oregano and sage and tourism sector in Jordan. The IFAD project director, Dr Samia Akroush, considers Andrés' work very helpful for both the project and the communities and reported as a success "…the development of research tools for data collection and action plan developed of value chain linkages of small farmers with the eco-tourism sector".

In Africa, Bolanle flew from her home country, Nigeria, to Kenya where she spent four months hosted by the Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International, a recipient of an IFAD grant that implemented the Sorghum for Multiple Uses Value Chain Project. Bolanle researched the impact of the project on the food security of smallholders in Kenya. Her supervisor mentioned that Bolanle's study Informed the organization Africa Harvest and will aid future design and implication of projects. It is a clear indication of what worked best and what needs improvement or adjusting given the impacts achieved by our interventions.

Bolanle and the AHBF team in Kenya. Bolanle is wearing a light blue top and is the second from the right

Bolanle and Olufemi, fellow students from the University of Ibadan, had the chance to present their research at the International Conference on Sustainable Development, held last September in New York. The Conference was organized by the Earth Institute at Columbia University, where the Secretariat of the MDP Global Association is hosted by the Centre for Sustainable Development headed by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs.

MDP students and the ICSD in NY, including Olufemi and Bolanle

Three of the students who had benefited from the IFAD grant and completed their field work will be in IFAD Headquarters on 6 December 2017 to share their experiences.

For more information, see Frequently Asked Questions in English, French and Spanish and visit http://mdpglobal.org/ifad-mdp/

Contact universitygrant@ifad.org for more information.

By Salvador Santiesteban

On 9 October 2017 IFAD met with other United Nations agencies and international financial organisations and institutions at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina. Discussions revolved around the new paradigms that are reconfiguring rural areas in Latin America and the Caribbean, and participants reaffirmed the urgent need to devote more attention to the rural sector.

The seminar was inaugurated by the Governor of Mendoza, Alfredo Cornejo, whose words of welcome emphasised "the need for more specific and intelligent interventions by public and private agencies and, therefore, the tremendous benefit of everything that has been done, and that can be done, in partnership with IFAD."

The event was particularly relevant to a region such as Latin America where, despite considerable economic growth in the last decade, 175 million inhabitants continue to live in poverty and another 70 million suffer from extreme poverty. One out of every two Latin Americans living in rural areas is poor. While the rate of poverty in Latin American cities is 24 per cent, in rural areas this rate almost doubles to 46 per cent. The dramatic impacts of rural poverty are, furthermore, practically invisible.

"In spite of these challenges, Latin America as a region invests less, proportionally, in the agricultural sector. During this meeting, IFAD and its partners reiterated the need to reverse this trend and devote more attention to the rural sector", commented Joaquín Lozano, Director of IFAD’s Latin America and the Caribbean Division. "We are facing a decisive moment for agriculture and in the fight against rural poverty, and this within the context of a critical moment for rural development in Latin American and Caribbean countries", added Lozano.

During the seminar the need was also emphasised to transform the narrative that is currently marginalising rural areas by taking advantage of the opportunities arising from the urbanisation process to strengthen the links between urban and rural areas. Daniel Pizzi, President of the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, commented on this by highlighting the need to examine the development of rurality and all its cross-cutting elements, "which include not only agriculture, but also infrastructure, climate change and social organisation, among other issues."

Hugo Beteta, Director of the Subregional Headquarters for Mexico of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) highlighted the significant gaps that are most often eclipsed by general statistical averages; therefore, he recommended that all of IFAD’s strategies include an inequality-based approach. In Beteta’s opinion, "the place, gender, ethnicity and class into which a person is born determine to a great extent their fate. In fact, in Latin America, a person’s origin is their destiny."

Inequality and exclusion were the focus of a significant part of the discussions. After highlighting the solid working relationship between IFAD and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Julio Berdegué, FAO’s Deputy Director General and Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, affirmed that the region has lost ground in rural poverty reduction in recent years, with only five countries remaining consistent in their indicators. Berdegué highlighted that the percentage of rural poor people who are destitute has increased from 50 per cent to 61 per cent in recent years. He therefore believes that persistent poverty is not so much an issue of deficiencies as it is one of social exclusion, an exclusion that, in the words of Ana Touza, Regional Adviser for the World Food Programme (WFP), has the face of a woman and is rural, indigenous, landless, without access to education and vulnerable to food insecurity.

According to Edith Obschatko, Agricultural Policy Specialist from the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the current definition of the rural population is too simplistic, and she highlighted that rurality is an essential part of each country’s identity. This observation becomes especially relevant at a time when the international community, and donors in particular, are giving greater attention to low-income countries, in spite of the fact that 72 per cent of the world’s poor live in middle-income countries. In this sense, Héctor Bravo, Chief of Staff of Chile’s Agricultural Development Institute (INDAP) highlighted the importance of targeting small-scale producers among native populations, and within a framework that includes municipalities, to implement programmes that are committed to reducing rural poverty.

In the case of Argentina, one of the world’s main food exporters, one third of its 3.5 million rural inhabitants are poor. Although the Government has made reducing poverty one of its priorities, and significant progress has been made, poverty continues to be especially severe in indigenous communities and it forces many rural young people to migrate. Aylen Azzaro, a participant in the Inclusive Rural Development Programme (PRODERI), financed by IFAD and implemented by the Unit for Rural Change (UCAR), noted the challenges that many inhabitants of rural areas still face in accessing water.

In his closing words, Mendoza’s Minister of Economy, Infrastructure and Energy, Martín Kerchner, emphasised that it is critical that all actors involved in rural development have a very clear path to fulfil their mandate.

In the second part of the seminar, Promoting and Financing Inclusive Rural Transformation, the principal international development financial institutions compared their respective definitions of the rural sector, the type of agriculture that they promote, and their different financial strategies. They also examined changes in the demand and supply of financial products to evaluate the efficacy of current instruments and identify innovations.

Por Salvador Santiesteban

El Fondo Internacional de Desarrollo Agrícola (FIDA), junto con otras agencias de las Naciones Unidas, organismos e instituciones financieras internacionales, debatieron el pasado 9 de octubre en la Universidad Nacional de Cuyo en Mendoza, Argentina, sobre los nuevos paradigmas que están reconfigurando el mundo rural en América Latina y el Caribe y reafirmaron la necesidad imperiosa de brindar más atención al sector rural.

El seminario fue inaugurado por el Gobernador de Mendoza, Alfredo Cornejo, quien destacó en sus palabras de bienvenida la "necesidad de una intervención más específica e inteligente de organismos públicos y privados, por lo que es de gran utilidad todo lo que hayamos hecho, y podamos hacer, en conjunto con el FIDA."

El evento cobró especial relevancia en una región como América Latina, cuyo considerable crecimiento económico en el último decenio no ha sido suficiente para que 175 millones de sus habitantes salgan de la pobreza, ni para que otros 70 millones encuentren alivio a su situación de extrema pobreza. Uno de cada dos latinoamericanos que vive en zonas rurales es pobre. Mientras que en las ciudades de América Latina la incidencia de la pobreza es del 24%, en las áreas rurales este porcentaje casi se duplica, con un 46%. El drama de la pobreza rural es, además, prácticamente invisible.

"A pesar de estos retos, América Latina es la región del mundo que menos invierte proporcionalmente en el sector agrícola. En este encuentro, el FIDA y sus socios han reafirmado la necesidad de revertir esta tendencia y brindar más atención al sector rural", comentó Joaquín Lozano, Director de la División de América Latina y el Caribe del FIDA. "Vivimos una etapa decisiva en materia agrícola y en el combate a la pobreza rural, en medio de un momento crítico del desarrollo rural de los países de América Latina y el Caribe", añadió Lozano.

Durante el seminario se hizo hincapié también en la necesidad de dar un giro a la narrativa que hoy en día marginaliza a las áreas rurales, de forma que se aprovechen las oportunidades que brinda el proceso de urbanización para fortalecer la vinculación entre áreas urbanas y rurales. En esa línea se expresó Daniel Pizzi, rector de la Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, quien destacó la necesidad de aceptar el desafío de dar una discusión relacionada al desarrollo de la ruralidad y las miradas transversales que intervienen ese desafío, "que no sólo incluyen a la agricultura sino también a la infraestructura, el cambio climático y la organización social, entre otros temas."

Hugo Beteta, Director de la Sede Subregional en México de la Comisión Económica para América Latina (CEPAL) destacó las grandes brechas que se suelen esconder detrás de los grandes promedios, por lo que recomendó que el FIDA incluya en todas sus estrategias un abordaje a la desigualdad. En opinión de Beteta, "el lugar, el género, la etnia y la clase donde se nace determinan en buena medida el destino de una persona: de hecho, en América Latina, el origen de una persona es destino."

La desigualdad y la exclusión centraron buena parte de los debates. Tras destacar la sólida relación de trabajo entre el FIDA y la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura (FAO), Julio Berdegué, Subdirector General y Representante Regional en América Latina y el Caribe de la FAO, constató cómo la región ha perdido ritmo en la reducción de la pobreza rural en los últimos años, con apenas cinco países capaces de mantener los indicadores. Berdegué destacó que el porcentaje de personas pobres rurales que son en realidad indigentes rurales creció del 50% al 61% en los últimos años, por lo que considera que la pobreza que persiste no es tanto un problema de carencia como de pobreza por exclusión social. Una exclusión que, en palabras de Ana Touza, Asesora Regional del Programa Mundial de Alimentos (PMA), tiene un rostro femenino, rural, indígena, sin tierra, sin acceso a la educación y sujeto a la inseguridad alimentaria.

Edith Obschatko, Especialista en Políticas Agropecuarias del Instituto Interamericano de Cooperación para la Agricultura (IICA), consideró que la definición actual de población rural es demasiado simplista y destacó a la ruralidad como parte esencial de la identidad de cada país. Esta observación cobró especial relevancia en un momento en el que la comunidad internacional, y los donantes en particular, están concentrando una mayor atención en los países de renta baja, a pesar de que el 72% de las personas pobres del mundo viven en países de renta media. En este sentido, Héctor Bravo, Jefe de Gabinete del Instituto de Desarrollo Agropecuario (INDAP) de Chile destacó la importancia de focalizarse en pequeños productores de pueblos originarios y en aquellas estructuras que incluyan a las municipalidades para implementar programas como un compromiso para reducir la pobreza rural.

En el caso de la Argentina, uno de los principales exportadores mundiales de alimentos, un tercio de los 3,5 millones de habitantes de zonas rurales son pobres. Si bien el Gobierno ha hecho de la reducción de la pobreza una de sus prioridades y se han logrado avances significativos, ésta sigue siendo especialmente severa en las comunidades indígenas y fuerza también a muchas jóvenes rurales a migrar. Aylen Azzaro, participante del Programa para el Desarrollo Rural Incluyente (PRODERI), financiado por el FIDA e implementado por la Unidad para el Cambio Rural (UCAR), recordó los desafíos que todavía encuentran muchos habitantes de las áreas rurales para acceder al agua.

Las palabras de cierre correspondieron al Ministro de Economía, Infraestructura y Energía de Mendoza, Martín Kerchner, quien consideró fundamental que todos los actores implicados en el desarrollo rural tengan una ruta muy clara para poder ejecutar su cometido.

En la segunda parte del seminario, Promover y financiar la transformación rural inclusiva, las principales instituciones financieras internacionales de desarrollo en la región compararon sus respectivas definiciones del sector rural, el tipo de agricultura que fomentan, y sus diferentes estrategias financieras. Asimismo, se examinaron los cambios en la demanda y oferta de productos financieros para evaluar la eficacia de los instrumentos actuales e identificar innovaciones.

FMD has successfully concluded the Financial Management Workshop for global and regional grant recipients, held in Bangkok from 25 to 27 October 2017. The Workshop was attended by 34 invitees managing Global/Regional grant recipients, representing 87 ongoing projects in 67 countries.

As acknowledged by Ruth Farrant, FMD Director, "The attendees keenly participated in the discussions and activities, and provided feedback on their experiences. Overall, the attendees expressed great appreciation for the initiative, considering it an unparalleled opportunity to exchange knowledge with IFAD staff and with their peers to ensure the effective and efficient execution of their projects. IFAD, on the other hand, was able to gain vital practical insight into common portfolio strengths and weaknesses."

IFAD was represented by staff from AUO, ETH, LEG, FPD, ACD and QAG, who went to Bangkok to deliver presentations and interact with the recipients. The presentations delivered are provided below, for the benefit of IFAD staff and other current and/or future recipients who were unable to participate in the event.

Day 1 topic 1. setting the scene fm overview from IFAD_Grants

Day 1 topic 2. ifad policy for grant financing and its implementing procedures from IFAD_Grants

Day 1 topic 3. good governance and anti corruption from IFAD_Grants

Day 1 topic 4. ethics from IFAD_Grants

Day 1 topic 5.1. designing a grant the ifad process from IFAD_Grants

Day 1 topic 5.2. designing a grant part two from IFAD_Grants

Day 1 topic 6. an overview of ifad grant agreement templates from IFAD_Grants

Accelerating the progress of nutrition-sensitive investments at country level

By Marian Amaka Odenigbo and Roberta Carino

On occasion of the 44th Session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), the Rome-based Agencies (RBAs - FAO, IFAD and WFP) organized a side event onFostering Nutrition Mainstreaming through RBA Collaboration for Africa– Accelerating the progress of nutrition-sensitive investments at country level which was held on 13 October 2017 at FAO HQ.

The main aim of this side event was to put on the spotlight the collaborative efforts on improving nutrition among RBAs and the nutrition-sensitive initiatives of partners towards fostering nutrition mainstreaming in Africa.

The event was divided into two complementary panel sessions i) Agriculture for Nutrition and ii) Broadening Partnerships for Nutrition Mainstreaming. The first panel session highlighted collaborative efforts at country level on nutrition mainstreaming by relevant partners such as Hivos, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and NEPAD. The second session presented the work of RBAs technical working groups - Sustainable value chains for nutrition, food loss and waste, Home grown school feeding, and the group on accelerating Nutrition Mainstreaming – in Africa.

Mr Sana F. K. Jatta, IFAD's East and Southern Africa Regional Director, opened the side event with an inspiring speech on the importance of investing in nutrition, particularly in the African region, through concerted actions. He underlined how all forms of malnutrition clearly have negative economic consequences on public health expenditures causing high losses on a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“Investing in nutrition cannot be business as usual”, Mr Jatta said. He added that there is an urgent need of establishing a holistic multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder approach in integrating nutrition into agriculture, social protection and other broad rural poverty reduction strategies to achieve better results on nutrition.

According to the ESA’s Regional Director, RBA collaboration is crucial for mainstreaming nutrition at project and country level, especially if we want to tackle the different causes of malnutrition and ensure sustainable lives for all.

A short documentary on modern fish processing in Zambia illustrated an innovative entrepreneurship to produce more food products from fish, thus increasing utilization, efficiency, contribution to nutrition and reduction in waste and losses. The protagonist of the short documentary is Ms Kasazi Nyendwa, a young woman beneficiary of the IFAD-funded Smallholder Agribusiness Promotion Programme (SAPP) and a fish farmer producing a variety of innovative and nutritious fish products to the Zambians communities.

In appreciation of this video, the IFAD Senior Technical Specialist on Fisheries and Aquaculture, Mr Richard Abila, highlighted the role of fish as a critical vehicle for food security and nutrition, providing food and income for households. He also mentioned that one of the challenges that RBAs need to collectively address is to identify means of implementing technology at lower level for easy uptake by the rural people and for contributions to their food security and nutrition status.

About "40% of the fish is thrown away. We need to develop cost-effective technologies for reducing these losses”, said Mr Abila in his concluding statement.

Advocating for diversity in the agriculture sector is one of the solutions to ensure nutritious and safe food and combat overall malnutrition said Mr William Chilufya, Regional Advocacy Officer at Hivos. “We need to diversify our eating habits”, he echoed after sharing Hivos’ positive experiences in fostering nutrition in Africa by promoting diversity in production and consumption through so-called food change labs.

He also emphasised the need of bringing together stakeholders to discuss about problems around food and diets diversification and find concrete solutions to the problem of malnutrition.

Similarly, Mr Hiroshi Hiraoka, Senior Advisor for the Japan International Cooperation Agency

(JICA), shared his valuable experiences in the context of the recently launched Initiative for Food and Nutrition Security for Africa (IFNA) where the partnership with RBAs clearly represents a fundamental step and concrete action to accelerate the efforts to alleviate hunger and malnutrition and scale up nutrition interventions in Africa.

He then concluded by assuring that, “JICA will continue the proactive engagement on food and nutrition activities” particularly in ten target countries and it would work with other organisations toward solving the world's food and nutrition problems.

“Nutrition is a social investment,” echoed Mr Hamady Diop, Head of the Programme Natural Resources Governance, Food Security and Nutrition at NEPAD. He further highlighted how several regions in Africa have already embarked on a process to mainstream nutrition into the Regional Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development (CAADP) Compacts and respective investment plans in the context of the Programme. Interestingly, Mr Diop outlined how access to food is one of the key priorities for the RBAs.

Ms Louise McDonald, IFAD Programme Officer, elaborated on the necessity of working together with the government as the only way to tackle the multiple burden of malnutrition in Africa. After briefly highlighting few successful ongoing RBA collaborations in African countries (e.g. Kenya, Mozambique and Madagascar), she then concluded by encouraging partnerships on taking into consideration their respective strengths in fostering the nutrition agenda.

IFAD’s Zambia Country Director, Ms Abla Benhammouche, who moderated the first Panel Discussion, also acknowledged RBA collaboration among other institutional collaboration platforms as a good approach to tackle malnutrition in all its forms. She closed the panel discussion by saying “if nutrition is already mainstreamed, there is always the need of doing more collectively”.

The event proceeded to a second Panel Session on Broadening Partnerships for Nutrition Mainstreaming, moderated by Ms Marian Amaka Odenigbo, IFAD Senior Technical Specialist in Nutrition. This session focused on the perspectives to strengthen RBA collaboration in the nutrition agenda and the global initiatives.

The first panelist was Ms Maya Takagi, FAO Deputy Strategic Programme Leader for Reducing Rural Poverty (SP3), who talked about the linkage between SDG 1 and SDG 2. She strongly stated that investing in nutrition is key to poverty reduction, as well as an investment that benefits the poorest, the communities and the families. According to Ms Takagi, there are two pathways through which access to a more diversified food and sustainable nutrition can be fully achieved with positive outcomes on poverty reduction at the same time: i) through nutrition-sensitive agriculture, and ii) by integrating nutrition into social protection programmes.

As a follow up on the global initiative, Ms Mutinta Hambayi, Chief of Nutrition Sensitive Unit at WFP HQ, underscored the importance of adopting a multi sectoral approach to tackle malnutrition in all its forms. Ms Hambayi described malnutrition as a multidimensional phenomenon driven by various determinants, requiring a strategic collaboration that effectively takes into account other sectors i.e. safe water, sanitation, social protection, health, climate and environment. Furthermore, she articulated what nutrition sensitive programming is and made a call for action in different sectors, among RBAs in order to improve nutrition outcomes and nutrition objectives.

To showcase the work of the RBAs, the representatives of the RBA working groups on Nutrition Sensitive Value Chains (NSVC); Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) and Nutrition Mainstreaming gave sound bites on their objectives and the basis for enhanced collaboration in view of nutrition mainstreaming.

According to FAO Senior Officer Ms Florence Tartanac, project interventions require going beyond a traditional value chain approach, commodity and market focused to investments with a nutrition lens. What is strongly required is to broaden the concept of value chain from a purely economic focus to one that encompasses gender, nutrition, health and environmental dimensions and to identify entry points along the entire value chain for enhancing nutrition at all levels.

Similarly, Mr David Ryckembusch, WFP Senior Programme Adviser, emphasized the multisectoral approach of the Home Grown School Feeding programme and its multiple benefits from improving nutritional status, health and cognitive development of children, to facilitating access to school and increasing attendance rates. “School meals are a good nutrition-sensitive investment that not only positively benefits children, but the entire community overall”, he said enthusiastically.

Finally, Ms Militezegga A. Mustafa, FAO Nutrition Policy Consultant talked about the Nutrition Mainstreaming group. Ms Mustafa emphasised that mainstreaming nutrition requires continuous financial and political commitment, capacity building and coordination.

In the event’s closing remarks, Mr Cheikh Sourang, Senior RBA Advisor, reminded the audience that RBAs need to work together in a systemic and proactive way in order to fully integrate nutrition into agriculture projects. He pointed out that there is still so much to do in terms of development of capacity, scaling-up and strengthening RBA collaboration for accelerating the progress of nutrition-sensitive interventions across Africa.

The scale of malnutrition and its impact on health and economic growth are serious global concerns. The three key words as the way forward of fostering nutrition mainstreaming through RBAs collaboration together with relevant partners and the government are: complementarity, alignment, coordination.

See also: Nutrition Ambition: It takes coordination, alignment and collaboration

By Kalin Schultz

Women and men taking part in a wealth ranking excersise of a farmer field school in Mbuzini on at Pemba island in Zanzibar, Tanzania.

Issues of gender equality and agricultural development are deeply intertwined. Powerful voices, including that of IFAD President Gilbert Houngbo, have made clear that if we do not empower women, we will not eradicate hunger or poverty by 2030.

The October Gender Breakfast gave participants at HQ a window on successful experiences in Tanzania, where IFAD has been funding two programmes – the Agriculture Sector Development Programme-Livestock (ASDP-L) and the Agriculture Service Support Programme (ASSP) – to improve agricultural technology and production practices along with gender sensitization among smallholder farmers.

For the first time ever, participants at a Gender Breakfast were connected directly with people from the field. This presented a unique opportunity to engage in an open dialogue with those who are both implementing and taking part in IFAD-funded initiatives.

Project Gender Focal Point, Asha Omar Fakih, coordinated the discussion in Zanzibar through the Tanzania Country Office. Mwajina Hassan, a woman participant in the programmes, shared her experiences. Both programmes have worked through Farmer Field Schools (FFS), where smallholders learn techniques and skills to improve their production and yields.

At first, only men attended the project meetings in Zanzibar. Fakih recounted that she had to emphasize that the project was intended to sensitize the entire community on issues of gender inequality, so it required at least 40 per cent of the group participants to be women.

She told the men “we need the women as well”.

Due to cultural norms in Tanzania, women do not normally hold leadership positions, mix with men or make an independent income. The programmes aimed to challenge these assumptions through gathering men and women together to learn within the context of knowledge-sharing and development.

Fakih and Hassan presented some of the challenges and the successes of the programmes. They spoke of the initial discomfort that the participants felt in the mixed-group setting. The women did not feel they could express their thoughts or ask questions. However, Fakih recounted that the women began to change over time. Each meeting, there would be more progress and engagement.

Slowly, the women in the group started asking questions more confidently and taking the lead on different projects. The women would also often share their new knowledge throughout the community, improving their own production practices alongside their neighbours’. Hassan had even taken on a leadership role as a Farmer Facilitator as a result of her personal progress and empowerment.

Investment in women’s education and economic participation gives significant social and economic returns. As the women in Zanzibar learned new skills, they were producing more crops. Wives began bringing home higher yields than their husbands. And as their production and income increased, they became economically empowered, resulting in improvements in individual, family and communal wellbeing.

As Fakih and Hassan from Zanzibar spoke to the Gender Breakfast participants, the multiple implications of empowering women through these projects became clear. They emphasized that many women have begun playing an active role in the local economy and in local government. Women are increasingly sending their children to school because they have the money to pay tuition fees.

As women become more economically empowered, their self-esteem and motivation increases. They begin to speak out and voice their concerns to their local representatives. They seek to educate themselves and their families further. In a place where women were not traditionally viewed as capable of earning an income or filling a leadership role, they begin to recognize their own potential.

The October Gender Breakfast made it possible for IFAD staff in Rome to hear directly from the people on the ground in Tanzania. The stories told by Fakih and Hassan about the impacts of the two programmes were powerful and truly exemplified the transformative nature of initiatives that focus on gender equality.

By Richard Abila and Laura Sollazzo

Crocevia: Snapshot of the infographic on the VGSSF

The event was held to reflect on the lessons and outcomes of the small grant, providing an opportunity for the Grant recipients to share with IFAD and other stakeholders their stories from the field by highlighting what actually happened and what were the challenges and success factors.

Where did the grant idea come from?

IFAD’s involvement in this small grant responds to a specific request by farmers and rural producers organizations at the 5th Global Meeting of the Farmers Forum (FAFO) hosted by IFAD in February 2014 where a special session on small-scale fisheries was organised. Specifically, the FAFO requested IFAD to ''establish a global grant programme for direct support to organizations of farmers and fishers to increase their capacity in policy and economic areas and to strengthen their initiatives''. Towards this aim, IFAD forged a working relationship with civil society organizations, networks and platforms representing the interest of small-scale fishers at a global level. In particular, four organizations have been instrumental in driving this collaboration, namely; the World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fishworkers (WFF), the World Forum of Fisher People (WFFP), the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) and coordinated by Centro Internazionale Crocevia, who were competitively-selected as the grantee of the small grant.

The need for the SSF Guidelines featured at the FAO 2008 Global Conference on Securing Small-Scale Fisheries held in Bangkok, as a means to harmonise international and national level policy interests with regard to small-scale fisheries. The FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI) approved the development of the SSF Guidelines at its 29th session, while at the 31st session of COFI the SSF Guidelines were endorsed for implementation. Through this grant, IFAD has demonstrated a strong commitment in moving the SSF Guidelines forward from development to implementation phase. Small-scale fishing communities will only see the full benefits of the SSF Guidelines if they are at the fore-front in implementation and ensure their interests are taken into account in all key decisions.

The IFAD-funded small-grant was approved in August 2015 and has just completed its activities last month. The small-grant had four key objectives:

(i) promote awareness about the SSF Guidelines among small scale fishery workers, their communities and organizations and to mobilize their support for implementation;
(ii) initiate capacity building programs for the fishers organizations and position them as key actors in the implementation of SSF Guidelines;
(iii) identify priorities and indicators for monitoring the implementation of SSF Guidelines through bottom-up approach and;
(iv) enhance the skills and capacity of the implementing organizations and other small-scale fishery workers’ organizations for a more effective role in policy dialogue and decision-making processes.

What actually happened and what were the success factors?

Artisanal fishery project Mozambique - IFAD Image bank

The project concentrated on raising awareness about SSF Guidelines amongst organizations of small-scale fishery workers and their communities through actions at local, national and sub-regional and building capacity for implementation in pilot countries. This was achieved through three sub-regional workshops held in Thailand, Nicaragua and Uganda; and seven national workshops held in India, Brazil, Ecuador, Pakistan, Morocco, Myanmar and Tanzania. Participants included representatives of different interest groups in small-scale fisheries such as: Civil Society Organizations, marine and inland fishing communities, women and youth groups, indigenous people, co-operatives, government departments, inter-governmental bodies including FAO and IFAD; Non-Governmental organizations, research institutions and academia etc. The workshops enabled these key stakeholders to understand how they can contribute in policy making processes which affect the livelihoods of rural poor communities that depend on artisanal fisheries. It was especially noted that many government representatives were unaware of the importance of SSF Guidelines, a critical gap considering the role Government has to play in domesticating the Guidelines in national policies and regulations.

The project made efforts in recognizing the role of women in the fisheries sector and, as a consequence, women were well represented in all the workshops and had a chance to have their voices heard. In her presentation at the meeting, Ms Editrudith Lukanga, co-President of WFF, explained how the Tanzanian national network of women increased their visibility in the international arena. Ms Gabriela Cruz Salazar, President of the National Federation of Fishery Cooperatives in Ecuador (FENACOPEC) told us about the practical difficulties they face in trying to make SSF Guidelines recognized and adopted by some of Latin American countries, partly because Government officers do not understand the benefits. Many organizations in her country would be interested in adopting SSF Guidelines as a way of protecting small-scale fishers, however there are constraints in the fishing laws on demarcating boundaries between fishing communities and the private sector.

Booklets, posters and video presentations were produced and distributed in targeted countries for disseminating information on the Guidelines. A short infographic video on SSF Guidelines was produced with translated text in French, Spanish and Portuguese. To reach a wider audience, articles on the workshop were published in the small-scale fisheries newsletter, SAMUDRA Report.

A major challenge now is how to expand awareness about SSF Guidelines to many other countries and communities that were not reached in this intervention and who still are not aware of them.

What actually needs to happen to make the change?

Mobilise the involvement of communities: this first step generates support through different methods adapted at the local and regional levels by advocating to governments and non-government stakeholders who were not informed of SSF Guidelines.
National level processes: make use of a pool of actors that can guide and trigger the process of change at the local levels.
Policy maker awareness: fishers groups go through guiding principles and ensure that the relevant policies can protect their interests and help build their capacities. SSF Guidelines talk to the people: it’s all about the fisher organizations to identifying themselves with the Guidelines.
Enhance opportunities for civil society and indigenous people to engage at the international level, including international platforms supported by IFAD such as Farmers Forum and Indigenous Peoples Forum.
Advocacy and building capacity are key to moving forward implementation of the SSF Guidelines by strengthening national level awareness campaigns and adapting them to the specific national contexts.
Country-level strategies and plans of action need to be developed which will articulate practical steps for implementing SSF Guidelines.

“Civil society organizations create possibilities to make this change happen” said Naseegh Jaffer, Secretary General of WFFP. Naseegh comes from the small scale fishery sector where he has been active with community development work for the last 30 years and was deeply involved in the civil society processes for development and adoption of the SSF Guidelines.

The IFAD small grant was complementary to the activities being undertaken by FAO globally in relation to the Guidelines. It has raised the profile of fishers organizations and enhanced their participation in the FAFO and other international fora. There is still a high degree of disconnect between SSF Guidelines and policy level engagement and it will take a while and more awareness raising for the Guidelines to make sense to policy makers. While this grant made valuable steps in awareness and capacity development, a lot more need to be done at the national level to make everyone’s voice heard and a trigger positive reaction within Government.

What was the “take home” message that emerged from this event?

Civil society organizations are pleading for more support from IFAD, FAO and other partners in support of SSF Guidelines implementation. They are asking for assistance of IFAD networks and projects to inform local leaders to bring up the importance of the Guidelines to higher levels.

Following the IFAD AAR on the small-grant, the expert pool on small-scale fisheries moved to FAO to attend the CFS 44 side event on SDGs and small-scale fisheries: meeting commitments and realizing the right to adequate food. This platform also contributed to advocating the importance of the SSF Guidelines especially in the developing world.

by Jonathan Agwe

Background: The Outreach Project - Expanding and scaling-up innovative financial inclusion and graduation strategies and tools in Africa has been successfully piloted. ‘The ‘Outreach Project’ (in short) was a two-year pilot implemented through a south-south-and-triangular collaboration (SSTC) in knowledge, technology and skills transfer between Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), East and Southern Africa (ESA) and West and Cenetral Africa (WCA) from August 2015 – September 2017 in three Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries – The Gambia, Mozambique and Tanzania. The pilot implemented by Fundación Capital - FundaK (www.fundacióncapital.org) is now being scaled-up. It was funded by IFAD through a PTA small grant, which leveraged 250 per cent co-funding from other partners, including the Skoll Foundation, UN Foundation, The Gates Foundation, Swift Foundation, Irish Aid, Amplifiers and the governments of the three participating countries.

Participating to target the Last Mile at the bottom of the income pyramid: Thirty-two participants attended the event – some in person at IFAD HQ and others remotely via video or telephone from international locations including Kenya, Mozambique and USA. At the knowledge sharing and learning event, FundaK – the recipient of the PTA small grant co-presented with FAO, the Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF), BRAC-USA and two IFAD Country Offices (Tanzania and Mozambique). The general focus of the event was on how to best deploy pro-poor digital financial services (DFSs) as part of the graduation programming in financial inclusion for effective livelihood improvement activities (aka, productive safety nets).

This picture shows The Last Mile– i.e., the ultra-poor for whom the “push” and the “pull” mechanisms in the financial system are yet to be very effective. This lack of effective push and pull mechanisms necessitates targeted and specialized interventions to ‘graduate’ the ultra-poor into economic citizenship.

Highlights, giveaways and echoes from the event are diverse and varied: The graduation programming package for livelihood enhancement comprises of a combination of conditional cash transfers (CCTs), consumption support, coaching/mentoring especially in income generation, savings mobilization, linkages to the formal financial system, linkages to pro-poor value chains with remunerative prices.

IFAD has at least 12 on-going projects with financial graduation programming interventions (Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, India, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uruguay). One financial graduation programming intervention has just recently been approved by the Executive Board (EB) for Burundi and one for Mozambique is on schedule for approval in December 2017. The FundaK piloted successes in ESA are being scaled-up through IFAD-supported operations, including but not limited to Tanzania’s Marketing Infrastructure, Value Addition and Rural Finance Support Programme (MIVARF) and TASAF; and Mozambique’s Artisanal Fisheries Promotion Project (PROPESCA) and the Rural Enterprise Financing Project (REFP). Observation: Lessons on graduation programming are now trickling in from within IFAD’s current portfolio.
BRAC implements the world’s largest successfully scaled Graduation model targeting households in ‘ultra’ poverty. BRAC has “graduated” some 1.7 million+ households from extreme poverty since 2002. The longest running Graduation RCT was on BRAC’s programme, showing a continued climb out of extreme poverty seven years later. Six international RCTs prove Graduation works internationally. At the intersection with social protection, BRAC says, graduation plays a vital role by shifting focus from ‘graduation out of a social protection programme’ to ‘graduation into a social protection system’. Observation: Graduation programming is a feasible business proposition for reducing perpetual ultra-poverty.
FAO challenges the dependence on CCTs in graduation programming by asking the question – is there need to place conditions on cash transfer to obtain desirable outcomes? FAO posits that there should be flexibility for households to manage their expenditures. Observation: Unconditional cash transfers (as well) lead to significant social and productive impacts on beneficiary households.
TASAF on deepening digital financial inclusion (digital financial services – DFSs) for Tanzania cash transfer beneficiaries says, they are “in the process of digitizing its payment system under which the Productive Social Safety Net (PSSN) beneficiaries will be empowered to receive their cash transfer payments direct into their mobile or bank accounts”. The establishing this ePayment system is demand-driven and is designed according to the needs of the beneficiaries. A testimonial from one beneficiary says, “I was very happy to receive money via my mobile phone, my daughter was very sick I didn’t have money at that time. I thank God for TASAF. I went very fast to Mr Mushi [Mobile money agent] within 3 minutes I had cash in my hands”.
Observation: In spite of these successes, challenges still exist that hamper the uptake of DFSs to scale for the economically active poor and more so, for the ultra-poor. These challenges which should be surmounted with time and appropriate investments include: low functional literacy levels of beneficiaries to quickly grasp the digital technologies, absence of most financial service providers (FSPs) and interested mobile network operators (MNOs) and/or weak network signals in the rural districts.

Watch this video on including graduation programming for a transformative social protection intervention for graduating The Last Mile into Economic Citizenship.

For all presentations at the event and more on financial graduation programming at IFAD, please, contact Jonathan Agwe, Senior Technical Specialist.

By ORDA

The Organization for Rehabilitation and Development in Amhara (ORDA), a strong and reliable developmental partner of the people and government of the Amhara region, is strategically filling developmental gaps in its short and long term projects and programs. ORDA implements a project in Mout Guna area which is characterized by rugged topography manifested with devoid of natural vegetation, soil erosion and severe land degradation. Although livestock asset is one of the major sources of household income, its productivity is very low. To change these adverse situations and improve livelihood of farmers, ORDA fruitfully delivers improved agricultural technologies and integrated watershed development practices.

ORDA financed by International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), with a 37.3 million Birr, has started to implement Sustainable Adaptation to Climate Change in Lake Tana Watershed under Community-Based Integrated Natural Resources Management (CBINReMP). It is called IFAD Guna Project which has been working in 15 kebeles of Farta, Estie & Lay Gayint Woredas of South Gondar Zone since 2015. The intervention kebeles consist of 23, 000 households and covers about 51,184 hectares of land which directly benefits 8,000 households (40,000 people).

The project distributed various livelihood options like 17 rope and washer pump, 13, 298 hop seedlings, 107 quintal potato tuber, 2,901 propagated apple seedlings, 4 kilogram vegetable seed/carrot, lentil, cabbage and salad/, 162 quintal of livestock forage, 166 fuel saving stove, 9 biogas, 42 cubic meter compost and 396 solar lantern for 1,232 households (91 female headed) in Ata Meher and Arga Meher intervention kebeles in a clustered approach.

The project targets to achieve outputs: Integrated Runoff Reduction and Moisture Retention Practices, Forestry & Agroforestry Technologies, Alternative Energy Sources, Water Resources Developed & Efficiently Utilized, Agricultural Productivity & Employment Opportunities, Increased Crop, Productivity & Soil fertility, Increased Livestock Productivity, Employment Opportunities created, Access to Social Services Improved, Access to Education Services Improved.

Target beneficiaries have been progressively changing their lives. Farmer Kindalem Feleke is to be mentioned forefront. He lives in Guna Begie Midir (formerly Farta) Woreda of Arga Didim kebele at Enset Village. The farmer and his wife woizero Alemnat Fenta have two sons & two daughters. Three of their children attend in a primary school. This poor farmer owns a quarter of a hectare of land and obliged to harvest a few crops, such as potato, wheat and triticale/a breed of oat and wheat/. He got insufficient production from his small plot of farm land. Hence, he was assisted by the government productive safety net program to cover the family’s annual food consumption. Moreover, he frequently used to get debts to buy house expenditures, such as sugar, food oil, salt, onion, soap, and agricultural inputs.

To beat poverty, the farmer was courageously got a debt of 6 thousand birr for sheep rearing and other agricultural input use. But, he was very much challenged as his sheep all dead. This time, he was put in a bankruptcy and aggravated his life from bad to worse. This farmer lost human dignity by the local community for not having been able to repay the loan in time. Amazingly, the loan exceeded about 12 thousand birr and he was in dilemma for migration. He said, “I never forget that I was in desperate situation to survive.”

At this critical time, he was selected as one of beneficiaries of ORDA-IFAD Guna project. In his village, a small river known as “Enset” percolates from the top Guna Mountain to Arga Didim villagers. However, no farmer was aware to use it for irrigation. Then, Kindalem with other farmers trained on vegetable production and apple propagation using irrigation. The project delivered him the necessary agricultural inputs (spade, irrigation watering can, vegetable seeds and apple seedlings. He practically started vegetable harvesting from irrigation since 2012.

The optimistic Kindalem was determined to escape from poverty. He produced vegetables three times a year and paid off a 12 thousand birr debt. He also bought 5 quintals of teff to an annual family diet. Consequently, he was very much encouraged and worked day and night. In 2013 and 2014 irrigation year, apart from fulfilling all his family’s food and other needs, he changed his small hut to a full- fledged 53 corrugated iron sheet top and bought a mule for a 10 thousand birr.

In the years of 2015, 2016 and 2017, he expanded his farmland for vegetable and fruit production. A farmer's livelihood is being improved. Food is already secured for the family. Now, he began building asset and saved money for a family’s clothes, schooling materials, and other issues. In this case, when his ox died in 2016, he immediately bought a horse for 9 thousand birr. This horse is now serving for both farming and transporting fruits and vegetables to market.

This person now has built a 60-corrugated iron sheet top house of what he has inherited from his father’s land at Kimir Dingay which is the capital of Guna-Begie Midir Woreda.

As a result of the training and tools for apple propagation provided by the project, the farmer has earned an average annual income of about 4 thousand birr. He is now selling a grafted apple for farmers & government offices in the surrounding.

Since 2013, the farmer and his wife Alemnat saves 30 birr monthly and have a total of 5 thousand birr in ”Megabe Enset” Village-Based Economic and Social Association (VESA). In addition, he saved 5,000 birr at the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE).

ORDA – IFAD Guna project benefited the farmer to use solar lantern. As a result, he was able to save money he spent for gasoline. The children also have been able to attend school without any health impacts. The farmer, who had been disrespected for being poor, has made a remarkable difference. Today, he becomes a model farmer that various offices and farmers across the zone frequently visit his garden to share his experiences. He’s also coaching farmers and found many successors in that village.

Generally, farmer Kindalem has totally changed his life style and he is in rapid progress. Everyone who visits his home can be a witness for his livelihood improvement. Currently, he gets a nutritious food, uses solar lantern (children can study better during night and reduced eye sight problems), saves money and builds asset, implements better with the skill and knowledge developed towards using agricultural inputs and technologies.

By Giulio Fabris

Climate change, migration, conflicts, hunger. Global challenges cannot be tackled individually by states or organizations, but require an international approach. Preventive actions to address these challenges should be based on an inclusive and sustainable development.

Global issues require constant and deep collaboration, partnership and commitment from all stakeholders.

The VII edition of the Diplomacy Festival in Rome was the occasion to gather and discuss with ambassadors, experts and representatives from all the political institutions based in Rome. Also known as the Capital of Diplomacy, Rome hosts over 140 embassies to Italy and the Vatican, 130 missions to international organizations, as well as cultural institutions, NGOs and international universities. The aim of the one-week Festival is to recognize the identity of the international community that works and lives in Rome and to foster dialogue and collaboration..

The event Global Challenges for UN Agencies in Rome at SpazioEuropa discussed the UN agenda and the role of UN agencies and other stakeholders in addressing international issues. Moderated by journalist Tommaso Polidoro, it brought together Jan Tombiński (Ambassador of the EU to the Vatican and UN agencies in Rome), Giorgio Bartolomucci (General Director of the Festival), Francesco Luna (WFP representative in Italy), Elisanda Estruch (FAO Lead Economist) and Mattia Prayer-Galletti (Lead Technical Specialist at IFAD).

The first speaker, Jan Tombinski, pointed out the urgent need of further cooperation between the European Union and the United Nations to tackle the huge challenges we are facing today, especially the refugee crisis. The Ambassador also highlighted the huge investments that the EU is allocating to sustainable development projects in partnership with the Rome Based Agencies, with a particular focus on fighting poverty and hunger.

Giorgio Bartolomucci, General Director of the Festival, highlighted the central role of Rome in the international diplomacy and focused on the opportunities offered by embassies, IOs and international actors. Unfortunately, he said, the city has not always made the most out of the presence of such a big number of international organizations and institutions.
The representative of WFP, Francesco Luna, called attention to the Sustainable Development Goals and to the impelling urgency to stop conflicts, which are deeply connected with hunger and food insecurity. Mentioning the The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, he made it clear that peace and stability are pivotal to achieve Zero Hunger and the other Global Goals by 2030.

The economist of FAO, Elisand Estruch, talked about the link between food security and migration, which was also the theme of World Food Day 2017. Addressing the root causes of migration through investments in rural areas of developing countries, she said, will help eliminate malnutrition and hunger, as well as reducing the migration flows.

Lead Technical Specialist Mattia Prayer Galletti spoke on behalf of IFAD, presenting the role of the organization in rural development. He showed the impacts of over 250 active projects around the world in terms ensuring food security and providing technical assistance to developing countries. In particular, he outlined the importance of investing in rural areas to create opportunities for young people: urbanization and unemployment are issues that can be addressed by investing in new technologies in rural areas in order to give youth the choice and the possibility to secure their future without migrating to big cities.

Learn more about which investments can create jobs for rural youth and download the latest IFAD and World Bank Rural Youth Employment paper.

Also, read about how IFAD-supported projects are working to support and employ youth in rural areas from this recent blog post.

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