Tackling rural poverty, together

Michael Wales, Ph.D.

Co-Chair, Global Donor Platform for Rural Development
Principal Adviser, Investment Centre, Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)

Platform advocacy: Aim at top decision-makers

Nater: You’re leading the work on a Global Donor Platform publication.

Wales: The working title is “The New Aid Modalities and their Implications for Rural Development”. It reflects the need to look at a whole range of new ways of financing development in the agricultural sector, now that we’re moving away from projects. They include budget support, partial budget support, conditional budget support, sector-wide approaches and separate packages of technical assistance, which, as I said earlier, are needed to plug gaps in the new development programmes. We’ve given the main responsibility for delivering the study to the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK. They’ll be supported logistically by FAO, and intellectually with peer review by professionals at the World Bank, IFAD, BMZ , DFID and FAO, among others, and by seasoned rural development consultants.

How will this help the Platform?
The Global Donor Platform can only hope to enter the market for knowledge-sharing and have development professionals pay attention if we have a high-quality product, done by the top experts. We’ll issue a number of interim summaries of the work in progress — no more than two pages each, summing up where we stand, our conclusions and where we go next. In parallel, we’ll have a webpage for comments. The Platform’s publications should be a foundation for building our position and making an impact. The Platform has to come across with a nuanced message that strikes home with senior decision-makers in the financing institutions, in governments and in legislatures, where parliamentary committees are scrutinising ever more closely the coherence of development spending. As more money is being made available for development, we really need to make the case for agriculture. The time is right.

More on the FAO's Investment Centre

Photos: Timothy Nater

Response by Mr. Vagn Mikkelsen, Consultant, Directorate-General for Sectoral Policies, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAGFOR), Managua, Nicaragua

Michael Wales suggests that the harmonised approach may not always be correct. I think his comment refers to the choice of technical approaches, not procedures. Interesting point: for example, looking at sector strategy, you could cite the increasing enthusiasm for the market/value chain approach, which the Global Donor Platform has recognized as a hot topic.

Are donors really sure about a single best approach? Are national ministries (not only agriculture) really flexible enough to exercise a choice and not simply accept, as in Nicaragua, the approach that for one reason or another is set forth in the National Development Plan? I think we need to work with more caution and not induce one particular approach to the promotion of economic development in rural areas. A national government would tend to do that; donors should not.

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