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New study screens partnerships for Vietnam's rural development
Emergence of “non-state actors” calls for a rethink
 Dr Minh: Access to Platform's global resources Vietnam, one of the “Asian Tigers”, is undergoing rapid socio-economic transformation, thanks to the socialist government's policies of “doi moi” (see box). Government partnerships with donors until now have functioned “essentially as mechanisms for coordination and dialogue mainly between donors and central government”, says Dr Le Van Minh, Director General, International Cooperation Department, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), Hanoi. “Given the rapid emergence of non-state actors, including the business sector, in areas like animal husbandry or forestry, our study asks if this sort of partnership is still a good way of enhancing aid effectiveness and coordination in ARD.”
With the help of Platform Consultant Jens Rydder, the MARD study assessed five ongoing Vietnamese ARD partnerships for their strengths and weaknesses:
“Doi moi” and growth
An estimated 19.5% of Vietnam's 83 million population lives below the poverty line and economic development relies on the agriculture, fisheries and forestry from which some 70% of Vietnamese still draw their livelihoods. However, since the late 1980s, the policies of “doi moi”, literally “new changes” in Vietnamese, have brought a significant reduction of poverty and strong economic growth in both rural and urban areas.
GDP growth has averaged 7.5% annually from 2001 to 2005. Poverty, affecting 37% of the population in 1988, on current trends will sink to 11% by 2010. Driving to complete the transition from a centralised to a market economy, “doi moi” policies have also turned the country into a magnet for foreign direct investment. US$ 20.3 billion flowed into the country from in 2007, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment, of which about 12% went to agriculture and forestry, food processing and fisheries.
The results were summarised in a  presentation Dr Minh made to the Platform Annual General Meeting in Paris on December 13, 2007.
The MARD's partnerships are largely results-oriented, the study finds, and have indeed enhanced policy development and cross-sector coordination. At the same time, some partnerships remain inefficient, and most still have not contributed significantly to the “mainstreaming” of decentralisation and reform initiatives at local levels. “Operationally,” admits Dr Minh, “they remain parallel structures.”
Among the lessons learned: all players must agree on a clear vision and strategy, sector-level constituencies must feel ownership, and the all-important consultation process must be balanced with work towards concrete results.
The Platform/MARD study is set for publication in early 2008, when relevant decision-makers will meet to discuss preparation of a “policy implication brief”. Says Dr Minh, “The access we gained to the Platform's global experiences and perspectives has really enhanced our local consultations and the quality of the final result. My Ministry is keen to expand relations with the Global Donor Platform.”
WDR 2008: Getting the word out
Place agriculture “at the center of the development agenda”
“Our lending to support agriculture is recovering”, says World Bank's Cackler
The latest World Development Report,
Agriculture for Development, launched in October 2007, calls for greater investment in agriculture in developing countries and warns that the sector must be placed at the centre of the development agenda if the goals of halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 are to be realised.
Weighing in at over 350 pages, complete with charts, tables and ‘best-practise’ case-histories, the report is both a cutting-edge work of reference and a compendium of policy recommendations. It draws on an unprecedented number of consultations with non-World Bank experts, including researchers, activists, economists, agronomists, other donor agencies, farmers and NGOs on all continents.
Funds for projects’ “proof of concept”
 Support for conversion of discarded charcoal dust into briquettes has helped generate income for Kenyan women. Following the launch in late 2007 of World Development Report 2008 and a number of high-profile promotional events hosted by Platform member organisations in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, work has now turned to ‘operationalisation’. One ready-made vehicle for that is the World Bank's  Development Marketplace, a competitive grant programme that will help put WDR main messages into practice this year and next with up to $200,000 in funding for innovative, early-stage agricultural development projects. World Bank officials at the Platform's December 2007 Paris meeting called on fellow donors to help support incubation of the most innovative ideas. Measures include financial contributions to the award pool, technical assistance for potential candidates and support for the proposal review process.
“In that sense”, says Mark Cackler, Acting Sector Director, Agriculture and Rural Development, World Bank, “the WDR is not the rural development strategy of the World Bank. Rather, it's about providing guidance on how to increase both ODA and public-sector funding for agriculture and about influencing policy both among donors and aid recipients.”
Reversing a trend? Cackler's presentation on WDR 2008 on December 12, 2007, at the opening of the Platform's annual meeting in Paris, showed that, since the early 1980s, both World Bank lending and overall ODA to agriculture had declined from 30% and 17% of total funding to just 10% and 3.5% respectively in the early 2000s. But while that trend in ODA funding had largely not been reversed, he said, World Bank lending was recovering. In financial year 2007, World Bank lending for agriculture increased for the fourth year in a row, to $3.1 billion, with 60% going to Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
The WDR 2008 agenda for action:
- Accelerate smallholder productivity increases for agricultural growth and food security in Africa;
- Follow a comprehensive approach to reduce sectoral disparities and poverty in the transforming countries of Asia;
- Enhance inclusion, sustainability and environmental services from agriculture everywhere;
- Pursue multiple pathways out of poverty: smallholder farming, labour market, rural non-farm economies (RNFE), migration;
- Improve the quality of governance in agriculture at local, national, and global levels.
“A dynamic ‘agriculture for development’ agenda can benefit the estimated 900 million rural people in the developing world who live on less than $1 a day, most of whom are engaged in agriculture,” says World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick. “We need to give agriculture more prominence across the board. At the global level, countries must deliver on vital reforms such as cutting distorting subsidies and opening markets, while civil society groups, especially farmer organisations, need more say in setting the agricultural agenda.”
Funding mechanisms should “recognise growing donor diversity”
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa seeks a common agenda with traditional donors
 AGRA's Dr Adesina: “We can't do direct budget support.” The traditional donor community needs “new lenses” to recognise “non-traditional donors”, according to Dr Akinwumi Adesina, the AGRA foundation's vice-president for policy and partnerships, a guest speaker at the Platform's December 12, 2007, annual meeting in Paris.
“What is needed is a new development financing framework that recognises the growing diversity of financing partners, including new public and private foundations like AGRA”, he said.
“The current development financing space is exclusive to multilateral and bilateral donors”, yet some non-traditional sources of funds today had started to outspend traditional donors, such as the global diaspora of African workers. Their remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa, according to Dr Adesina, totalled some $11 billion in 2007, more than double the amount of 2002.
A new breed of financing partner
AGRA, a US registered charitable foundation, currently focuses on 13 countries* across the African continent with practical work to help millions of small-scale farmers and their families lift themselves out of poverty.
 AGRA programmes seek significantly to boost farm productivity and incomes while safeguarding the environment. Launched in 2006, AGRA also advocates for policies that enhance Africa's entire agricultural “value chain”, from seeds, soil health and water to markets and agricultural education. Its board is chaired by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, AGRA maintains offices in Nairobi, Kenya and Accra, Ghana.
*Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia.
Also growing in importance were “philanthropy funds” like AGRA (see box), Dr Adesina said, which hoped to be making $500 million worth of grants annually “within the next five years”.
Avoid “one-size-fits-all” approach “We need to avoid the classic ‘basket’ versus ‘non-basket’ silos of development financing”, Dr Adesina told the Platform meeting. “One-size-fits-all aid coordination processes that oblige everyone to work with direct budget support won't be practical. We will work closely in partnerships with donors at country level, but we won't do direct budget support. US Internal Revenue Service laws oblige us always to ensure charitable purpose and oversight over expenditures, in some cases.”
“Why not work towards a new integrated development framework that unites us?”, he asked. “Public-private development donors' platforms at national levels could bring together all donors under one umbrella… We need to work together as a team.”
In August 2007, Platform co-chairs Christoph Kohlmeyer (BMZ) and Mike Wales (FAO) addressed a letter to the then newly-appointed AGRA Chairman Kofi Annan. “The necessary scaling-up of the agriculture-for-development agenda requires vision, innovation and shared knowledge”, they wrote. “We warmly welcome AGRA and other foundations and private donors as development partners in this common endeavour.”
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