International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) 10 – Core contribution 2016-2018

IFAD is today the only multilateral organization with a mandate specialized on smallholder agriculture. It is a unique partnership of 176 members from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), other developing countries, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). With more than 60 percent of members contributing to the Fund, IFAD’s sense of ownership is high, especially as compared to other financial instiutions.

IFAD is one of the three UN Rome-based agencies specialized in food and agriculture. All three agencies have different but complementary mandates, with the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) playing an important role in developing norms and sharing knowledge on agriculture, and the WFP (World Food Programme) specialized in delivering food aid. As a fund, IFAD’s role is to mobilize resources to invest in development opportunities for poor rural people in the form of loans and grants to country partners.

With its focus on rural poverty eradication, IFAD has contributed to progress in the Millennium Development Goals number 1, 3 and 7 (eradicate extreme poverty, promote gender equality and empower women, and ensure environmental sustainability). The organization is well positioned to make a significant contribution to the Post-2015 Development Agenda, in particular Goal 2 “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”, and in positioning smallholder farmers at the center of global efforts to strengthen food security.

IFAD is one of the 13 multilateral priority organizations of Switzerland in the Dispatch on International Cooperation 2013-2016, and is foreseen to remain a prioritiy organization in the Dispatch on International Cooperation 2017-2020.

The clear mandate of IFAD on smallholder agriculture has enabled the organization to develop an expertise and proven results in areas of work that are central to the mandate of the Swiss development cooperation, namely poverty reduction and rural development.

IFAD’s approach for the transformation of rural areas is fully in line with SDC’s, with a focus on inclusive value chains, sustainable increase of agricultural production and productivity, food security and nutrition, sustainable management of natural resources and climate change adaptation, plus empowerment of women, youth, and farmers’ organizations.

IFAD’s commitment to identifying new sources of finance for rural development in the Post-2015 is also in line with the engagement of Switzerland in the financing for development global debate, and the need to establish some international funding mechanisms to ensure the realization of the Sustainable development Goals.

Operational model: IFAD has progressed steadily in its fundamental transition from a focus on financing individual projects to a programmatic approach that links knowledge work, policy dialogue and partnerships to projects in each country, with growing attention given to the scaling up agenda.

Development outcomes and impact as defined in the Results Measurement Framework (RMF) 2013-2015: performance is high in terms of rural poverty impact, environment and natural resource management, gender equality, market development, replication and scaling up. For these indicators, performance is already close to or exceeding RMF targets set for 2015.

Benchmarking performance: the performance of IFAD’s operations is generally on a par with the agriculture sector’s operations of the World Bank globally, similar to that of the African Development Bank in Africa, and better than the Asian Development Bank in Asia and the Pacific.

Strengthening financial management capacity: IFAD has strengthened its financial operations department and its budget and organizational development unit. IFAD has implemented the new financial model using the sustainable cash flow approach, which has now become the framework for determining the Fund’s advance commitment capacity.

Innovative financing: IFAD has signed an agreement with the Development Bank of Germany (KfW) for a sovereign loan up to a maximum of USD 500’000. This is regarded as a pilot and IFAD gained a lot in terms of negotiation skills in the preparation of this sovereign borrowing agreement.

Phase 11 01.01.2016 - 31.12.2018   (Completed)