Tackling rural poverty, together

Member driven, results-oriented

Membership in the Platform is voluntary and open to donor countries and development agencies, multilateral organisations including international financial institutions, and foundations. Member organisations work in solidarity towards their common goal to reduce rural poverty in developing countries through increased cooperation and collaboration. Every Platform member is regarded as equal.

Membership

Full members contribute a minimum of €50 thousand to the Platform Trust Fund annually. Each full member has one seat on the Board and can serve as a task leader for specific activities.

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Governance

Rural development is central to poverty reduction

Three-quarters of the world's 1.4 billion extremely poor people live in rural areas in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Worldwide, over 950 million men, women and children are undernourished. Food price peaks in 2008 pushed an additional 100 million people into poverty. Some 1 billion people are now hungry.

Yet, public investment in agriculture and rural development has long been in decline.

With only a few years left to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, agriculture provides opportunities for donors and partner country governments to leverage their efforts in the fight against poverty.

Donor cooperation is key

Increasing aid to agriculture and rural development is not enough.

Amid competing development agendas and limited financial resources, increasingly complex international aid architecture and new aid modalities, development agencies can no longer afford to work in isolation.

The international aid effectiveness agenda is clear: donors must work together to maximise development impact.

Striving for impact

Working with the Platform, members are searching for new ways to improve the impact of aid in agriculture and rural development.

• An increased share of official development assistance going towards rural development
• Measurable progress in the implementation of aid effectiveness principles
• Greater use of programme-based and sector-wide approaches
• More sustainable support to ARD by member agencies

A joint donor initiative

The Global Donor Platform for Rural Development is a network of 34 bilateral and multilateral donors, international financing institutions, intergovernmental organisations and development agencies.

Members share a common vision that agriculture and rural development is central to poverty reduction, and a conviction that sustainable and efficient development requires a coordinated global approach.

Created in 2003 — following years of relative decline in public investment in the sector — the Platform is committed to increasing and improving the quality of development assistance in agriculture and rural development.

Addressing aid effectiveness

The Platform promotes the principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action for sustainable results on the ground.

A neutral convening power

The Platform provides a forum in which members and partners come together to build consensus around critical or emerging issues and formulate joint approaches.

Adding value

The Platform adds value to the individual efforts of its members by facilitating the exchange of their development know-how. The sharing processes consolidate into a robust knowledge base which the Platform uses for example in their joint advocacy work.

About

Platform actions against rural poverty in the next three years

Dear Reader,

After the thorough review of the Platform's effectiveness, efficiency and relevance, we consequently want to achieve within the coming years:

• an increase in the share of members’ ODA going to ARD;
• tangible progress in the implementation of the Paris Declaration and the Accra Action Agenda at country level;
• an increase in the use of programme-based and sector-wide approaches in ARD; and
• a rationalisation of ARD support by members in selected countries.

Address from the Chairs