Tackling rural poverty, together

Willi Graf, Ph.D.

Senior Adviser, Natural Resources & Environment, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Berne

The Swiss way: persevere in projects and build trust with the people you work with

SDC headquarters is a modern glass-lined building with an airy atrium on the outskirts of Switzerland’s capital city. Inside Willi Graf’s office, a large painting of the Bolivian cordillera hangs on the wall, the Andes mountains snow-capped and remote. Outside, traffic rushes by on a modern overpass. Willi Graf’s 20 years in agricultural research and rural development have been divided between these two worlds, and connecting the stark realities of the field with the bustle of headquarters is one of his present challenges. The SDC’s approximately 550 staff members administer an annual budget of about $950 million through some 750-odd projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Switzerland provides about 0.44% of Gross National Income (GNI) to development. While practically level with the average ODA-to-GNI ratio of the EU-15 countries, that’s still well under the international target of 0.7%. Yet the SDC, focused largely on rural areas in the poorest countries, enjoys high respect among peers, at international level and in the field. A senior World Bank official says, “I’m a fan of SDC. They were early to recognise the importance of farmer participation, women's groups and micro-finance projects. They’re a terrific partner.” Will Graf spoke about the Swiss approach to rural development with Timothy Nater.

Nater: What is Switzerland’s comparative advantage in agriculture and rural development?

Graf: One thing is our belief in continuity and perseverance. Some might call it stubbornness. But in development, it’s expensive to drop what you’re doing and start something new. Sticking to projects can pay off. Another thing is trust. Once we’ve developed trust with partners, we stay with them and rely on them. So our approach is to invest in the structures and the people we have, and build on that. Although within SDC we’re often critical about the long duration of our projects, the feedback from outsiders on what we’re doing is mostly positive.

Give me some examples of the SDC approach.
Take what we’ve done in watershed management in India: our presence there over many years has really paid off. Here are two more specific examples. The first is a programme for dry beans, started in east Africa in 1985 and now run by the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance. This was launched by CIAT, part of the CGIAR network, together with the SDC, CIDA of Canada and USAID. I spent six years as a crop researcher on this programme, working in the Great Lakes area of Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. It saw many ups and downs, and several times our partners had their doubts. But we Swiss were determined to support this over the long haul and always managed to convince them to stay the course.

Beans are a lucrative cash crop and an essential food crop in Central Africa. The programme has now reached about 2.6 million small farmers. Local seed systems have been started up and contribute to improved overall food security. And the coordinator of the programme is a Congolese, Dr. Mukishi Pyndji, who’s been with it for more than 20 years.

Another typical SDC ‘continuity’ success story is CIFEMA (Centro de Investigación, Formación y Extensión en Mecanización Agrícola), in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It’s the most impoverished country in South America. Very difficult climate in many parts: arid and cold. CIFEMA’s speciality is agricultural implements adapted to a small farmer’s conditions. Its products include special, light-weight implements for equine tillage — for horses and donkeys.

CIFEMA was launched as the agricultural engineering center of the Greater University of San Simón in the early 1970s. Then, as always happens sooner or later, the question of sustainability arose. The idea here was to make a business out of it. The SDC and the university each took financial shares in the new company, with the Swiss shareholding eventually reverting to farmers and local investors. Of course, there were huge adjustments to make in the transition period and success was never guaranteed, but SDC stuck with it. CIFEMA director Jaime Mendoza has been in place now for over 20 years, too. I just got an email from Cochabamba saying the company is finally making money.

That sounds more like innovation than stubbornness.
A major plus for the SDC is that we’ve been largely free of the sort of disruptive political influence from politicians that other nations impose sometimes on their national development agencies. That’s one of the advantages of being a small country: we don’t have the political bias of, say, the old colonial powers. The other thing about the SDC is that we’re not expected to act as market-openers for Swiss industry, despite the fact that some Swiss companies are world-market leaders in areas important for developing countries such as food processing, seeds and pesticides.