Managing for impact: learning from successes and failures

The East and Southern Africa (ESA) annual workshop focusing on managing for impact kicked off on 14 November in Arusha, Tanzania. The event brings together 200 participants from 17 countries. 

This is a special event on many fronts. To start with, the participants warmly welcomed colleagues from South Sudan. Secondly, they bid farewell to Ides de Willebois, who is moving on to lead the West and Central Africa division.  And last but not least, this is a unique event because for the first time, participants have embraced moving away their from traditional way of doing workshops and have embraced knowledge sharing methods.

Ides de Willebois in his opening remarks reiterated the fact this is a learning and sharing event. “Without learning and sharing we cannot improve and we cannot have impact”. He also went on to say that “we need to have a better understanding of what we do, so that we can do it better.”

In concluding his remarks, de Willebois mentioned that he is planning to start an exchange visit between East and Southern Africa and West and Central Africa. “I hope that West and Central Africa colleagues will join next year’s annual event, so that they can learn from your experience”. 

Breaking the mould

Whenever you decide to innovate or break away from business as usual, there is some apprehension. You feel gratified when breaking the mould ends up being successful and resonates with the expectations. And this is exactly what happened at the ESA event.

It was so refreshing to see 200+ participants embrace knowledge sharing methods such as openspace, spectogramme and world cafe type discussions. Thanks to these participatory methods, they started to mingle, bond and in no time they got to know each other.  

In the process, they heard many stories, including one about how ESA implementation workshops evolved from a being top-down loan administration events to more learning events owned and organized by the projects.

The majestic mount Kilimanjaro and the Kalali women dairy cooperative

As a child, when school was  over, I would be counting the days so that I could join my grandmother in Mount Damavand. Damavand is Persia’s tallest mountain in the Alborz mountain range. Grandma had these wonderful stories about mount Everest, the far way mount Fuji and then a majestic mountain in Africa - mount Kilimanjaro. 

I was intrigued by mount Kilimanjaro, because as a I child I found it difficult to fathom that Africa had mountains. So, on Monday when we had to sign-up for the field trips, I could not believe that finally I would be able to see this far far away mountain.

Unfortunately the majestic mount Kilimanjaro decided to remain pretty veiled and the clouds did not cooperate. But nonetheless, seeing it was an emotional moment and brought back many fond childhood memories.

We then moved on to visit the Kalali women dairy cooperative. This cooperative is part of the Agricultural Sector Development Programme where IFAD is investing loan funds in supplementing financing to the nationwide development programme, to counteract the depletion of the initial funds committed by development partners as part of a basket fund arrangement.

The cooperative is located in Machame division, Hai district in Kilimanjaro region. Inspired by a local daily community business, this cooperative was established with 132 members in 1988. The cooperative’s goal is to:

• increase income of poor rural households, particularly women in the area through a number of different income generating activities
• improve lives of orphans and provide assistance to poor families who were unable to provide education and sound nutrition for their children

“To get going the cooperative members contributed 1000 shillings each and payed a membership fee of 50 shillings,” explained Nancy Manasseh Kidin, the cooperative’s chairperson.

Considering their scarce income, these monies were paid in 4 installments. The cooperative started with 8 dairy cows. In 1995 they had 41 dairy cows.

Considering the vital role women play in rural societies, the cooperative decided that women headed-households were the ones to receive the cows.  They agreed that the person who receives the cow for a period of seven months would:

• give one litre of milk a day to the orphanage
• give the calves to other women headed-household and members of the cooperative 

As a result in a short time, 24 women who had signed up to this deal managed to provide dairy cows to 117 cooperative members.

Today the cooperative has a total of 260 members.

Diversifying activities

These industrious women used their income to diversify their business. In the 90s they bought themselves a milling machine.

“We provided milling service in the local market and expanded our business by buying a container to store the maize”, said Kidin.

“We also used the profits from the milling business to buy seeds.”

In 1993, they went one step further and bought themselves an electric machine and donated their diesel operated milling machine to another women group.

With the profit from their milling business they bought feed for the cows.

A terrible blow

They had a flourishing business, produced milk in abundance and sold this to a company in Arusha, thinking that a company is a reliable partner.

“We failed to ask for the money upfront and the company failed to pay us 12,000,000 schillings”, said Kidin.

This was a terrible blow for them. The community lost confidence in cooperatives and felt let down.

This mishap taught the cooperative an important lesson: never accept an “IOU”, always finish a transaction, sell, get your money and go on.

Despite this set back, they managed to back on their feet, thanks to the generous contribution of Italians.

A new door opens: dairy processing 

The Italians provided them processing instruments and that is how they started making butter and cheese.

Today they produce:

• 400-800 litres of milk a day
• 10-20kg of cheese per day
• 50-95 packs of butter per week
• 400-600 packs of yogurt per week

They keep track of their daily production and make some impressive graphs without using Excel. They also have a sophisticated booking keeping practice.

They package their products and have a registered trademark. “We sell the dairy products at Moshi, to grocery stores, to hotels and send our cheese and butter all the way to Zanzibar”, explains a proud Kidin.

The cooperative has the necessary certification to package its product, however, they are faced with the challenge of not having adequate technical support. This means they are unable to take their business to the next step and benefit from industry’s best practice.

One thing that we observed was the BEST BEFORE DATE on their products. Without exception their products seem to have a shelf life of one year!!!!

Kidin shared with us that the cooperative aspires to be able to:

• procure large 50 litre metal containers to store the milk instead of using plastic containers
• avail themselves of technical expertise and training so that their products are of high quality meet regional standards, have bar codes and can compete with Kenyan products
• have access to veterinary service
• have access to East African Community Market and get packaging machinery 
• have all the women of the community become members of the cooperative
• become a renown cooperative both inside and outside Tanzania

In conducting their business, the cooperative has learnt the importance of:

• providing thorough and in depth training to the machine operators, so that they do not only know how to operate the machine, but also maintain it properly
• understanding the market demand and their potential competitors
• doing a good market search before buying equipment and better understanding what is needed and how a piece of equipment can help them 

Expanding the business and facing new challenges

With a relatively good income from their dairy business, the cooperative bought a sunflower oil pressing machine and started a savings credit cooperative (SACCOS).

The SACCOS has 375 members and started with a capital of 3.2million schillings.

The older women of the community put their savings in the SACCOS and the more business oriented women use the SACCOS to get a loan. The loans have an interest rate of 3%.

Kidin shares with us that the SACCOS are faced with two challenges:

• underpayment
• corruption

This has led to a loss of 22 million schillings.  This loss made the community understand the importance of choosing right people as SACCOS board members. They now know that a board member:

• needs to be a trusted member of the community
• one who understands the ins and outs of the business and entire process
• one who has knowledge of financial management so that they can play a supervisory role, detect collusion and immediately take corrective actions

Investing in health and eduction of young people

The community is committed to provide education for the children and young people - especially to orphaned children and those from less advantaged families.

They use their profits to send children from disadvantaged families to school and are also assisted by Italians who are sponsoring a number of children and putting them through school.

Their vision is that every child has to go to school.

Their sustained programme of investing in education of their children is one of their great successes. Thanks to this initiative many young people have successfully finished school, obtained their degree and now serve as accountants, agriculture specialists, engineers and health workers.

Many have heard of WFP’s school feeding programme. Well, the Kalali women dairy cooperative runs a similar programme - they support school feeding by providing one glass of milk per class. 

The cooperative challenges

Kidin shared with us the cooperative challenges: 

• continuous power cuts which lasts days
• lack of access to adequate and state of the art machinery for packaging and conservation so that they are able to compete in the  market
• lack of access to technical expertise to take the business to its next level
• lack of local talents and expertise
• lack of access to appropriate equipment for conservation
• high taxation and cumbersome regulations
• competition with Kenyan products

The cooperatives aspirations

Kidin and the cooperative members aspire to:

• have all women in the area become members of the cooperative
• give dividends to all the members and not just provide contributions in kind
• create more employment opportunities
• send all children to school
• expand the sunflower pressing business
• innovate and continuously provide new services to the community
• provide capacity building
• build technical and leadership skills and groom local talents
• set up a milk bar so that community members understand that there are other options to drinking alcohol
• do more follow-ups and have a better feel what you can realistically achieve 
• develop robust business plans

We cannot but wish this group of hardworking and resilient women the best of luck. They are a great example of how when a community takes development in their hands, despite set back, they are able to move on and bring about change. I am sure the Kalali women dairy cooperative will go from success to success and manage to fulfill all their aspirations and be a model for many more women.

Preparing for #sfrome: The story behind the session number

Browsing through the ShareFair programme you might have noticed that every session has a number, and you probably asked yourself: “what is the logic behind these numbers?” Someone asked me if it signified number of minutes of each session. Well, the answer is no, I believe that would have been very unfair to proposal number 1. It is actually a very simple logic behind the numbers.

As you all know by now, the ShareFair Steering Committee received 300+ proposals for this year’s event. 300+! We were thrilled by the number of proposals, and needed to have a solid system for keeping track of them during the thorough selection process. Patti (who I have voted to be the Steering Committee’s most structured person) suggested immediately to give the proposals fixed numbers, and so we did. The numbers are simply the unique identifier for the proposals, based on the first list we received. Nothing more, nothing less.

When I think back at the first version of the Excel list, I am very excited and happy to see how our graphics team has shaped it into this beautiful programme that you are holding in your hands today. All these numbers, names, links and comments have been turned into a colourful, easy to read overview of the event. It should be easy to find an select the sessions that interest you the most.

On a personal note, what I am looking forward to the most, is to finally meet the people behind the names and numbers in this list who have been our companion for the last couple of months. I am looking forward to finally attend their sessions, and to listen to their stories in person. Taking this event from paper to reality has been an intensive but fun journey, and I hope the coming days will reflect this.

8 days to Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair at #IFAD HQ. The show is on the road #sfrome

Nine months ago, on a chilly January morning, the share fair steering committee and a group of other colleagues, met for a visioning session. At that meeting, we discussed the event's format, themes, audiences and agreed that we would organize an "out-of-the-box" event.

We did our best to live up to this commitment. And hopefully this is reflected in the share fair provisional programme.

Considering that the inaugural session is on the second day, the cocktail is on the third day and it finishes on a Thursday, I guess we can consider the second edition of the share fair an  "out-of-the-box" event!

But all kidding aside, as the saying goes, "the proof is in the pudding", and in 8 days time, we'll see whether we managed to live up to our vision. Rest assured that we put all our energy and passion into it.

Acting on learning and knowledge
In preparing for this event, we took stock of the learnings and experience of the First Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair and the various regional ones. So hopefully, we've built on their strengths and addressed some of the challenges.

One of the lessons learnt from the first edition was that we had to put in place a sound screening process to review the over 250 proposals that we received.

We divided up this task amongst the steering committee. We met regularly over the course of a month to review and discuss the proposals making sure that we were doing the selection in a fair and transparent manner. So kudos to the 160 proposals selected. You guys for sure went through the wringer!

Putting all our learning into action, we agreed that we would not have poster sessions nor booths. For this edition, we've introduced a tent which will have a chill-out corner and the speaker's corner. And we hope that many participants will use the speaker's corner to share their conversational or mainstream ideas, views and aspirations. 

We're looking forward for the chill-out corner to serve as a fertile ground for networking and connecting people.

This edition of the share fair has the luxury of having four keynote speakers. Etienne Wenger, Rob Burnet and Mark Davies will be at the share fair. Michele Payn-Knopfer due to competing commitments will not be able to be with us in person, but will do her session via skype.

Every day from 15:30-16:30 you can meet the keynote speaker of the day at  the chill-out corner.

Taking cue from the Addis share fair market place, we've introduced the show and tell session which will take place on 27 September from 17:00-18:00. This session will give participants an opportunity to showcase special activities and initiatives. If you are interested in this session, make sure you sign-up to secure yourself a slot.

This share fair like all the others, will also have a knowledge tree. You will have an opportunity to adorn the baobab knowledge tree with your pearls of wisdom, ideas, learnings and thoughts. We particularly ask you to share with us what do you think are the value and impact of events such as the share fair.

Share fairs are no powerpoint zone
We love the law or even better the edict of no powerpoints. Share fairs are no powerpoint zones. So, if you are one of the few presenters who are planning to come with your 50 slide shows, better change your plans and adopt a knowledge sharing method or TedTalk/AgTalk format for your session. Discuss this with the facilitator assigned to your session. If you are "self-facilitating" your session and need help, give us a shout and we'll dispatch th rescue team!


What does it take to organize a share fair?
The short answer is commitment, passion, dedication, cooperation, collaboration, coordination, teamwork, preparation, attention to details, empathy, believing in and practicing "the art of possibility"  and no prima-donnas.

And we had them all or almost all.

We were also blessed to have had the endorsement of IFAD management and the full support of our Chief Development Strategist who is also the KM champion.

What has struck me most in this adventure, is what I call the process of natural selection. That is to say, we acknowledged and respected each other's strengths and weaknesses. As a result we ended up taking on tasks that we were good at. And believe me this happened in the most seamless manner without anyone realizing that it was happening. Almost a miracle.

Next time you have to plan and organize a similar event, let the people on the team take on tasks and activities that they are good at. Do not force people to do things they are not good at - that is recipe for failure.

Share fair's web and social media presence
One of the trademarks of the share fair brand is social reporting. The share fair will have a contingent of social reporters who will use social media (Twitter, blog, Facebook, Flickr, Blip.TV, YouTube, podcasting) to report live from the various sessions. The facilitators will be sharing the highlights of their respective sessions via a blogpost. We'll be using #sfrome.

Thanks to social reporting methodology, we  engage with those who are not in the room and are able to share their thoughts, inputs and ideas with those "in the room".

We will be webcasting all the plenary sessions, keynote addresses and all the sessions held in the Italian Conference Room and the Oval room. We've integrated our webcasting with Twitter and Facebook - very much a la LiveStream - or dare I say even better!

An event about YOU and for YOU
Over the course of months we put the logistic machinery in motion. Colleagues have been diligently processing visa requests and we hope that the approved visa requests will get then on time to attend the event.

The last couple of weeks we've had meetings with the session presenters and facilitators, volunteers, administration, ICT and security colleagues. And we've learnt so much in this process. Now we know that for an event of this size, to ensure safety and security of participants and to make sure everything goes smoothly, we need to have extra guards, extra movers, have medical staff on the premises. This is why Willem was asked to "order an ambulance"!

While we've tried to cover all grounds, for sure there will be things that we may have forgotten and there may be some glitches. When you encounter a challenge, please put on your creative thinking hat on, smile and find a way to overcome the challenge.

We look forward to welcoming the participants from more that 70 countries to IFAD headquarters. Please remember registration starts at 8:00am on Monday 26 September and do not forget your identity card and/or passport. See you next week.

Should IFAD become a learning organization?

Should IFAD become a learning organization? Are we effectively sharing the learning emerging from our activities across regions, internally and externally? These are some of the questions that Cristina Sparacino - IFAD's Oprah Winfrey - will be posing to IFAD colleagues.

Today, at IFAD we are hosting a mini knowledge share fair to share the highlights of IFAD-funded projects and programme (better known as IFAD project portfolio) and discuss the challenges and opportunities for 2011 portfolio.

What triggered this event was the realization that we are producing quite a number of "knowledge products". However, these products are of different quality, some are adding value to the overall development discourse, while others may be lagging a bit behind. We also know that these outputs are not always widely shared to trigger learning and generate knowledge.

If we want to expand our horizons and learn from others, we need to look beyond our own horizons and learn about what is happening in the bigger world.

Now, "the bigger world" is relative, it can be the entire development world, or the colleague sitting in the next office. What we're noticing is that we do not necessarily know what everyone is working on and what challenges colleagues are facing. So what is happening is that there are times that we end up reinventing the wheel. When we face a challenge, our prime preoccupation is to overcome it and just get on with it. This is perhaps our Achilles Heal because we do not take the necessary time to ask around and find out if others were confronted with a similar challenge and how did they go overcoming it.

Experience shows us that when we organize learning and sharing events we get an overwhelming response. This means that while we are all keen to learn and share, we do not seem to make it quite a "way of life". Our role as KM/KS facilitators is to create that enabling environment and encourage colleagues to come out of their offices and share their gems and nuggets.

The mini knowledge share fair aims to do exactly that, and do it in a fun way. We'll kick off with an overview of the 2010 portfolio, highlighting the lessons and what we need to do more of and better in 2011. We'll then have a chat show discussing "should IFAD become a learning organization". And then we'll open the market place.

At the market place we have a chill-out corner, where Thomas Rath and Roberto Haudry will share the back-story of why their projects received highest possible rating and will answer to your questions.

Colleagues will alternate at the speaker's corner discussing issues such as Will climate change kill the fisheries and aquaculture sector? and what are the gender dimensions of value chain?

In the Show and tell corner, participants will be able navigate the Globalremittance gateway and track who sends money where, navigate land rights on the web, learn more about innovative approaches to documenting gender in Latin America and the Caribbean, find out how IFAD has built the capacity of pro-poor institutions and learn about Rural Finance Learning Centre. In this corner, colleagues can familiarize themselves with the operations application alphabet soup: PPMS, RIMS, PLF, PSR. Learn about the treasures stored in these applications and learn about the system that keeps track of money and helps them have less headaches, reduces the number of emails and phone calls.

Participants while touring the market place can stop to watch a selection of IFAD-produced videos featuring the people we work for and with or go on a virtual tour and visit where IFAD works by experiencing the power and potential of Geographic Information System and Google Maps. They can also go behind what meets the eye and see how national and international media cover rural development, agriculture, food security, gender-related issues.

In the knowledge sharing corner, participants have an opportunity to learn about ‘capitalization’ or knowledge capturing methodology and see how ‘capitalization’ is put into practice, learn how to conduct an open space or a peer assist.

We dedicated a corner to talk about the value and potential of social media, where colleagues can experience first-hand how social media channels are used as knowledge sharing tool.

How IFAD is using social media

View more presentations from IFAD International Fund for Agricultural

Development.

In the process corner, will be discussing where does the knowledge emanating from our global and regional grants end up? Who is using this knowledge? And how does this knowledge inform new global and regional grants? And last but not least, in the publications corner we have on display all the publications produced in 2010.

As one of the organizers, I am looking forward to have a fun day. We'll be tweeting - so follow #sharefair - and will also be blogging. So tune back in.

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Agknowledge Africa Share Fair: The show is on the road

It is months that we've been planning the Agknowledge Africa Share Fair - and now finally the show is on the  road!!!

We're seeing the ILRI complex getting busier and busier by the hour. It is so nice to see old friends and colleagues. There is a nice feeling of anticipation about the event. Everyone is looking forward to meeting new people and to learn and share with each other.

The organizers met earlier today to go over the agenda and to iron out the last logistical issues before the big day. The social reporters will be meeting in less than 20 minutes to organize themselves. Make sure you follow us on the blog and on twitter. The hastag to follow is #sfaddis.

We're going to start tomorrow with what is now known as day zero. Day zero is a learning and sharing day, where a number of colleagues from various organizations will host different sessions on a range of topics such as:

• blogging
• collaborative writing
• knowledge sharing methods
• Google geo products
• journalistic reporting

The big show starts on Tuesday and it promises to be an super EXCITING event. One of the great attractions of this event is the Ethiopian style market place, followed by the learning pathways - inspired by IFAD-funded PROCASUR programme. The learning pathways will focus on:

• water
• livestock
• land
• climate change

The event will also benefit from 5 thematic focus discussions on topics such as:

• Young people
• Documenting farmer knowledge
• Writeshop process
• Telecenters
• Mobile devices
• Storytelling
• Make knowledge travel
• Radio
• Indigenous knowledge
• Value chains
• Reporting agriculture
• Spoken web
• KM impact assessment

So keep tuned on this channel. We'll be reporting live. If you have any queries, want to know more about the share fair please use this blog or twitter (#sfaddis) and share your thoughts with us!

Concluding the IFAD-ICARDA workshop on knowledge and technology transfer in Aleppo, Syria, today

On Thursday, 29 October 2009

The Workshop on Knowledge and Technology Exchange for Enhanced Quality of IFAD/ICARDA Operations in the NENA region concluded its deliberations in Aleppo, Syria today with a “Retreat” that discussed the Medium Term Management Plan 2010-2012 of IFAD’s Near East and North Africa Division (PN). The participating staff of IFAD and IFAD-supported projects deliberated the operational priorities of PN, including means of improving implementation and impact of country programmes and ways to expand and strengthen the lending and grant programmes while improving efficiency in portfolio and project development. The participants also discussed PN’s Contribution to IFAD-wide results by means of enhancing partnerships, expanding co-financing and intensifying knowledge sharing and dissemination.

The participants then broke into four separate roundtables working group discussions focusing on four aspects of the division’s work, namely, the Annual Work Programme and Budget (AWPB), Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), Procurement and Financial Management.

The AWPB Working Group predominantly consisted of country program managers of IFAD supported projects. Along with IFAD staff in the Working Group, the participants identified a number of constraints, including the quality of AWPBs. The group expressed the need to develop a model of reference for greater consistency. Another major impediment to AWPB planning and implementation is the often incongruence of financial administration between government and IFAD funds particularly due to the fact that government funds are usually not flexibly tuned to the annual format of AWPBs. The group recommended approaching governments with the idea that they should administer their funds through a local project account for the implementation period with the flexibility necessary to carry over government funds.

Another pressing and fundamental issue is the lack of synergy or fine tuning between AWPB and the Logframe. Implementing the AWPB often reduces the projects into its activities without enhancing appropriate linkages of these activities for impact. The group recommended that the Logframe should be the steering course of AWPBs and that it should be updated continuously. This also was linked directly to another issue, the flexibility of AWPB. The AWPB should be adjustable more frequently and less constrained by current restrictions. Often there are also stalls in the planning and delivery of AWPB particularly due to the national procedures for approval and the participants emphasized the need for early proactive planning. The group also recommended that capacity building in preparation for implementation of AWPB should be a concentrated continuous effort. The fact that the planning of the project is imbedded in the AWPB under the overall Logframe makes it fundamental to implementation and impact making capacity building all the more crucial.

Finally the last issue raised was that knowledge management and innovation is not reflected in the AWPBs. This lack of reflection reduces the effectiveness of knowledge management and innovation support to the project. This support can go someway in enhancing capacity of project management units and supporting innovative management and intervention, which all fundamentally contribute to greater impact of projects.

The M&E working group discussed the impediments to more effective M&E systems in the IFAD-supported projects. Chief among them are dissymmetric perceptions with regard to the importance of M&E. Some Governmental officials tend to pay more attention to physical progress (i.e. output) than to measurements of outcomes and impacts. Another reported issue is pertaining to the M&E design itself whereby too many indicators, some of them are not relevant to the country context, are being monitored. Furthermore, there seems to be a disconnect in some Project Management Units between M&E staff and the rest of the project staff. A list of suggestions for M&E improvement was proposed:

• Sound and pertinent M&E system should be devised at the project design stage and not during start-up as it seems to be the case in most of the projects


• Empowering M&E staff through capacity building aimed at fostering the Monitoring for Evaluation approach


• Work with the Governments to foster awareness related to the necessity to measure impact

The Procurement working group addressed the need for capacity building at the PMU level with a view to strengthening the skills of PMU staff in managing procurement. The group made a series of recommendations to improve procurement performance by resolving the most common procurement challenges currently facing the on-going IFAD–assisted projects.

During the day, the workshop participants toured research stations within the ICARDA headquarters compound, where they were able to inspect some laboratories, facilities and filed experiments in areas of soil conservation and water harvesting. The participants had the opportunity to interact with the researchers at these well equipped facilities and discuss practical solutions to problem facing IFAD’s going projects. This includes a wide range of released technologies and services offered by the GIS department that are suitable to improve interventions in the agro-climatic zones where IFAD is active.

Nadim Khouri, Director of PN closed the workshop with a presentation in which he highlighted the major achievements of three decades of cooperation between the IFAD and ICARDA, during which the Fund provide US$37 million in grants to the centre. He highlighted the sectoral distribution of these grants, of which 76 percent was allocated for applied research and technology transfer, 12 percent for management of natural resources, nine percent for value chain and three percent for capacity-building. He emphasized the importance of further enhancing cooperation with ICARDA building an even stronger strategic alliance between the two institutions. He again thanked the Government of the Arab Republic of Syria and ICARDA for hosting this important learning event.


On Wednesday, 28 October 2009

Participants at the IFAD-ICARDA workshop on Knowledge and Technology Transfer in Aleppo Syria have dedicated this day to field visits to sites of three IFAD-supported projects in Syria, the closed Jebel el-Hoss Agricultural Development, the on-going Idleb Rural Development Project and the on-going Badia Rangeland Development Project.

Participants who visited the Badia Rangelands Development Project reported that implementation of the project activities are being carried out by some 200 herder cooperatives. Each cooperative has about 100 members. The cooperatives collaborated with the BRDP in rangeland rehabilitation. The process works like this: the cooperative identifies the land that they would like to rehabilitate and discuss it with the management of the BRDP. Cooperatives usually allocate 500 Ha for rehabilitation. The characterisation of the plot of land takes place and the most appropriate method for rehabilitation is selected either through direct seeding of palatable range varieties or through the cultivation of forage trees. Where range reserves are being established, the cooperative provides the land and manages the grazing rights in the reserve; whereas the project provides the land preparation, cultivation and guarding for a period of 4 years.

The results are impressive. Despite the extended drought over the past years, and thanks to the selection of appropriate range varieties, implementation of high quality land preparation and cultivation practices, and very proactive project management, the results are generating more demand among cooperatives for replication. Key elements that we need to consider in the course of replication or adaptation of this methodology are:

• the land tenure and the grazing rights and whether these are vested in homogeneous social units (tribes, sub-tribes);
• the “representativity” of the herders’ cooperatives, their legal status and whether they include all users of a given geographic area; and
• strict government enforcement of environmental rules and support to environmental development.

Participants in the field trip to the IFAD-supported Rural Development Project in Idleb were able to examine some of the major achievements of the project in helping about 42,000 beneficiaries in 140 of Syria’s poorest villages improve their food production and incomes.

At the total cost of almost US$45 million, the project has already reclaimed some 20,000 ha of rocky mountainous land plots turning them into productive small agricultural holdings. It has been highly successful in increasing the area cultivated with fruit trees and different seasonal crops, supporting agricultural extension and developing water resources and water harvesting techniques. The project has been particularly successful in reaching out to landless and poor rural women and men with microfinance and vocational training helping them develop their own micro enterprises and, thereby, generating incomes for themselves and contributing to job creations for others.

A good example of the many micro enterprises supported by the project is the mushroom farm of the 45 year old small producer, Abdulaziz Ismael, who received vocational training and technical support from the project. With an initial investment of US$2000, Abdulaziz has been able to initiate a mushroom farm in his underground garage. The Mushroom farm has come to represent a reliable source of income for Abdulaziz and his family, which consists of six members, granting it a comfortable standard of living.

As one of the most successful microfinance experiences in the Arab region, the so called “Village Funds” developed and supported by the Idleb project in 22 villages are yielding some extraordinary results with 100% repayment of all small loans by micro-entrepreneurs and a zero failure rate of on-going enterprises. IFAD will be developing some of the success stories of this project and its Village Funds in various communication products that will tell some of the most amazing successes of poor rural women and men in charting a better future for their families.

The Workshop on Knowledge and Technology Exchange for Enhanced Quality of IFAD/ICARDA Operations in NENA continues

The “Knowledge and Technology Exchange for Enhanced Quality of IFAD/ICARDA Operations in the Near East and North Africa Workshop” was opened by Mahmoud El Solh, Director-General of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) and Nadim Khouri, Director of the Near East and North Africa Division of IFAD in Aleppo, Syria, last evening (Monday, 26/10/09). About 70 workshop participants, including staff members of the two institutions and other experts and resource persons from IFAD supported projects in NENA, attended the opening ceremony.

In his opening speech, Mahmoud El Solh, Director General of ICARDA said the workshop will deepen the strategic partnership between ICARDA and IFAD. “This is our opportunity to learn from IFAD colleagues on the sustainable agricultural development aspects because our research agenda should target such aspects, El Solh said.” “At the same time,” he added, “I am happy to see so many Country Programme Managers who can see what ICARDA has to offer of technologies that may facilitate their work in development.” He affirmed that there are many technologies that are winning grounds quickly, some others are really new and some technologies that need more fine tuning to meet the needs of the ultimate target group, which is the resource poor farmers.

On his part, the Director of IFAD’s Near East and North Africa Division, Nadim Khouri, thanked the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic and ICARDA for hosting and organizing the workshop. He said “the objective of this learning event is to update our knowledge on enhanced rainfed agricultural production systems.” “About 80% of cultivated land in the world is rainfed while about 60% of the food produced is produced by systems that do not rely on irrigation,” he said. Large numbers of resource-poor rural people live in dry areas, with limited opportunities to enhance their capacities to improve food production and standards of living. He added: “We understand that poor people have their own strategies to move out of poverty and the best strategy we can have is to understand their strategies and help them realize them and multiply their assets.”

Khouri further stated: “We basically have US$ 300 million that are going to come out of IFAD funds for the region over the next three years.” On the basis of 1:1 dollar cofinancing, IFAD could attract a similar investment from co-financiers of its projects, bringing the total external funding to US$ 600 million. Kouri said: “Normally, the largest co-financing comes from the recipient countries and beneficiaries of development projects themselves. So if our investment starts with US$300 million by the end we will have about US$1 billion basically entrusted in us and our partners to decide how to allocate in the next three years.”

Khouri emphasized that helping the most vulnerable, IFAD’s target group, requires greater efforts to make best use of available resources, knowledge and technologies to enhance the quality of the Fund’s interventions in the region, which is facing increasing challenges under climate change conditions. The learning event should help the staff of the Near East and North Africa Division further enhance their capacity to reflect upon the newly acquired knowledge and to boost the impact of IFAD’s operations.

The opening ceremony was followed by a dinner reception, which provided and initial opportunity for the experts and staff members of the two institutions and participating resource persons from IFAD-supported projects to meet and exchange views on various issues under consideration.

Most of the participants expressed satisfaction that the workshop will strengthen country capacities in the NENA region on the latest agricultural packages available from research. Many indicated that it would also would help align ICARDA operations with the Country Strategic Opportunities Papers (COSOPs) and IFAD loan projects. The workshop should also help foster a strategic partnership between IFAD and ICARDA country programmes and take stock of joint initiatives and assess future collaborations.

On Tuesday, 27 October 2009


The first day for the workshop started with a PowerPoint presentation by the Director General of ICARDA, Mahmoud El Solh on research outputs and approaches to enhance food security and improved livelihoods in dry areas. The presentation dealt with constraints leading to food insecurity and poverty in Dry Areas; technologies towards food security and better livelihoods; approaches for technology transfer; and ICARDA’s Strategic Plan 2007-2016 on Agricultural Research for Development in Dry Areas. He underlined that the severest impact of climate change will be in the NENA region. He underlined the need for new technologies to face the challenge of ever scarcer water resources. In this regard, El Solh highlighted the importance of developing more drought tolerant varieties of crops; improved management of water resources; and alternative solutions to traditional irrigation including the use of supplementary irrigation methodologies in rainfed areas.

Following a plenary discussion, a group photo was taken for all participants who then broke into four working groups dedicated to discussing in depth the following areas of work:

• Group 1: Improved agricultural productivity and food security – Crops
• Group 2: Improving agricultural productivity and food security – Livestock
• Group 3: Water and natural resource management and climate change
• Group 4: Value chains, microfinance and market diagnostics

Each of the four groups attended and discussed presentations by ICARDA scientists, IFAD experts and resource persons. Following a couple of hours of discussions, the working group formulated their findings and presented brief reports to the plenary.

Focusing on crops, the first group presented what has been identified as the main challenges in this area. This includes, among others, the challenge of enhancing research for development and expanding its coverage to larger scale projects as well as the challenge of scaling up innovation and technology dissemination and outreach. The group also identified a number of constraints to overcome, such as the need for expanding the lack of awareness and “buy-in” at the national level; lack of capacity to indemnify products and creating enabling system of support linked to markets and a disconnect between National Agricultural Systems (NARs) and the national priorities. The group also highlighted the weakness of marketing systems and trade issues as well as the need to develop alternative crops, including alternatives to the cultivation of poppies, and the need for policy reforms to enable small farmers to compete for market opportunities.

The report of the second group, which focused on livestock, indicated that the discussion was based on the experience of the IFAD-supported Mashreg-Magreb project, which has developed animal feed technologies and helped establish community development organizations and approaches. The group outlined the needs for improved feeding technologies and alternative fodder and feed resources, improved milking and cheese processing with a focus on shifting market demand. Among others, a range of approaches were discussed for enhanced adaptation rate of such technologies.

Addressing water and natural resources issues, the third group affirmed that a new water productivity concept has emerged with the climate change challenge and increase severity of water scarcity. It recommended that new policies and strategies at different levels should be accommodated to improve farmers and nomads productivity ensuring good life quality and livelihood. Land productivity and water productivity concepts are to be seen together during the design and implementation phases of projects. The group also underlined the importance of mapping of resources and management of natural resources using GIS, indicating that ICT is important to have a role in transfer of technologies to farmers and nomads within search Institutes and projects. The development of technologies for scaling up and adoption requires engagement of research and development projects to fill in the gaps in production.

Dealing with value chains, markets and diagnostics, the fourth group focused its discussions on the analysis of the value-added chains of Onions and Pomegranate and the constrains facing small producers. It concluded a series of recommendations, including, among others, the possibility of increasing the use of seed capitals and start-up capital to introduce and develop the activity, institutionalization of small farmer groups and their role in processing, transfer of resources and empowering of small growers in the value-chain.

Following this first half a day of brain storming, the workshop participants moving their debates to the field visiting three ICARDA supported projects.

IFAD and ICARDA hold a regional knowledge and technology transfer workshop in Aleppo, Syria

Monday, 26 Ocober 2009

With emphasis on rainfed agriculture, a three day regional information exchange and knowledge sharing workshop starts in Aleppo, Syria this evening. Some 70 staff members of IFAD, IFAD-supported projects in the Near East and North Africa region (NENA) and the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) are expected to participate. The “Knowledge and Technology Exchange for Enhanced Quality of IFAD/ICARDA operations in the NENA region” workshop aims at strengthening PN’s capacity to incorporate the latest research-generated agricultural Science and Technology (S&T) packages and other up-scalable innovations in its future operations in the region.

The learning event will take place at ICARDA headquarters with several field sessions at the sites of IFAD-supported development projects and ICARDA research stations. It will provide learning opportunities for the participants to identify and discuss major needs and priority areas that could benefit the design of development projects for NENA countries. The field work should provide ample opportunity to demonstrate the technological packages in the areas of:

• improving agricultural productivity and food security
• adaptation to climate change and natural resource management
• upgrading pro-poor untilization of value chains and markets
• diagnostics for targeting pro-poor research and development investments

The workshop will reach its objectives through wide application of several KM activities & tools, including round table discussions, focus groups (World Café), informal meetings, and direct interviewing of beneficiaries from IFAD and ICARDA projects. The participants will select specific themes (out of a list of 22 themes extending from themes like rangeland rehabilitation and water harvesting to the themes like biodiversity, gene management and biofuels) as the main focus of their work during the workshop. Designated staff will facilitate plenary sessions, contribute as resource persons, lead the field visit groups, and generate success stories from the field. The event will end with a divisional PN retreat that will examine a number of deliverables including the Divisional Management and Medium Term Plans.

Besides the benefits of cross fertilization and lifting of the overall team spirit, the workshop is expected to yield concrete deliverables, including:
• 20 learning notes on available technologies and approaches in rain-fed agriculture
• 6 success stories (human stories) from the field
• validated Divisional Management Plan 2010 and a PN Medium term plan 2010-2012
• strengthened networking and systematic knowledge sharing mechanisms between the country programme and IFAD HQ
• Outlines of 2-3 specific projects that would build on ICARDA’s knowledge and expertise in areas relevant to IFAD’s thematic priorities in the NENA region