IFAD replenishment negotiations
The VIII replenishment negotiations for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) will start in February 2008.
Background to IFAD
IFAD aims to reduce extreme poverty and hunger among the poorest rural people with a focus on small-scale agriculture and rural employment. It is a centrally run organisation but is trying to decentralise to place it closer to the field in a more structured way. As part of the decentralisation strategy, IFAD has piloted a field presence programme in 15 countries, which is reported to have been successful. However sceptics of this emphasise the financial burden of having field offices and the negative experience of other organisaitons in coordinating headquarter and country offices.
IFAD wants to engage more with the wider aid architecture. That said, much of the aid architecture literature is very general and responds to the needs of International Financial Institutions and Bilateral donors. Interestingly, IFAD is both an International Financial Institution and a UN agency as well as having highly targetted sectoral niche. It is keen to retain its sectoral nice and project based approach and country governments themselves are keen to keep themselves separate from the new aid framework (associated with forms of budgetary support).