Tackling rural poverty, together

Our ultimate goal is to reduce poverty and promote economic growth in rural areas in developing countries, as reflected in our Mission Statement:

Our activities are based on three inter-related and complementary pillars — Advocacy and Outreach, Shared Learning and Aid Effectiveness — all aiming to support donors and partner-country governments alike in adjusting to this ‘new way of doing business’ with transparent and efficient cooperation, and in translating the principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness of March 2005 into practical reality in the area of agriculture and rural development (A&RD).

Pillar I – Advocacy and Outreach

Ensuring that the needs and opportunities for the rural poor are appropriately addressed and to attract more private and public investment into rural areas, we speak with ‘one joint donor voice’ and contribute to policy debates, conferences and workshops on international, regional and national level, highlighting the role of rural development and agriculture in achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Examples of our work in this context include (i) the publication of various studies, briefs and pamphlets; (ii) a series of interviews with members and other experts driving rural reform in the developing world and (iii) our support to World Development Report 2008 ‘Agriculture for Development’. Linked to this support is our collection of best practices in A&RD.

Important events convened or supported by the Platform, tailored to the needs of our members and providing a ground for discussion, collaboration, and concerted effort included:

• Platform Annual General Meeting, Paris, in December 2007
• 2^nd European Forum on Sustainable Rural Development , Berlin, in June 2007
• Donor Consultation Workshop on World Development Report 2008, Washington, in December 2006
• Platform General Meeting, Washington, in December 2006
• Donor Consultation Workshop on CAADP, Geneva, in November 2006
• Platform Annual General Meeting, Brussels, in April 2006

Further active Platform participation at international and regional events included:

• 2020 Conference on Taking Action for the World's Poor and Hungry People, Beijing, in October 2007
• CAADP Partnership Platform Meeting, Addis Ababa, in September 2007
• African Green Revolution Conference, Oslo, in August 2007
• International Conference on Strengthening and Widening Markets and Overcoming Supply-Side Constraints for African Agriculture, Lusaka, in June 2007
• Conference on Value Chains for a Broad-Based Development, Berlin, in May 2007
• African Partnership Forum, Moscow, in October 2006
• FAO's World Food Day, Rome, in October 2006
• Oslo Conference on African Green Revolution, in August 2006
• World Bank European ESSD Forum, Paris, in June 2006
• International Workshop on Alternative Development in a Drugs Environment, Vienna, in May 2006
• IFAD General Meeting, Rome, in February 2006
• Africa Forum, Ouagadougou, in September 2005

Pillar II – Shared Learning

We are not only encouraging donor harmonisation, we promote effective and systematic lesson-learning between development agencies and build consensus among all rural development stakeholders on what works and what doesn’t. We help donors and their developing-country partners work together to hammer out the most appropriate rural development strategies and thus harness the full potential of coordinated donor aid.

Consequently, we are committed to shared learning, innovation and better practice. We strive to improve the quality and impact of investment in rural areas by:

• Publishing consensus-based policy guidelines, joint donor statements and studies on agriculture and rural development;
  • Sector-wide Approaches in Agriculture and Rural Development: This study takes a first and comprehensive look at some of the ways in which SWAps and SWAp-type approaches have evolved in A&RD. It includes a desk review of experience, issues and challenges and case studies from seven countries, with in-depth information available for Mozambique, Tanzania and Nicaragua and assesses the extent to which SWAps are achieving their aims, their intended trajectories of change and provides key lessons for the future.
  • Joint Donor Concept on Rural Development: Platform member consensus on the ‘drivers’ of rural development as well as the guiding principles and approaches that should guide rural development strategy and implementation.
  • The Role of Agriculture and Rural Development in achieving the Millennium Development Goals — A Joint Donor Narrative: A joint donor statement highlighting and critically discussing the role of agriculture, an integral part of rural development, in achieving the MDGs, in particular MDG 1 (to halve hunger and poverty by 2015).

• Identifying and addressing jointly the ‘hottest topics’ in rural development and facilitating the formulation of policy briefs on each topic;
  • Platform Policy Brief No.1 — Mind the gap: How to improve rural-urban linkages to reduce poverty: Given the spatial inequalities plaguing many developing countries and urban-biased government government policies of the past, we must learn to correct these spatial distortions so that resources like labour, capital and goods can move freely within economies.
  • Hot Topics — Platform Consensus on Rural Development Issues of Global Significance in 2006: Platform member consensus on A&RD issues of global significance in the short to medium terms.

• Sharing good practices, experiences and operating guidelines on what works in rural development and what doesn’t via this website and periodical newsletters.
  • Collection of accounts of best practices in agriculture and rural development in support of World Development Report 2008.
  • Cornerstones for Effective Agriculture and Rural Development Programmes under a Programme-based Approach: These cornerstones are meant to offer a practical tool to facilitate the transition process from ‘donor project aid’ to harmonised and government-led development approaches following the OECD-DAC guidelines for aid effectiveness.
  • Operational Guidelines for the Platform’s facilitation service: This note is intended to clarify the role of the Platform as an external “facilitator” of in-country harmonisation and alignment processes in agriculture and rural development.
  • Assessment Study on Harmonisation & Alignment in Rural Development in Four Pilot Countries: This study assesses current achievements, opportunities and constraints to harmonisation and alignment in rural development in Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Nicaragua and Tanzania, and identifies possible approaches and actions for us to increase overall aid effectiveness in the rural sector in these countries as well as on a global scale.

• Providing the opportunity to experts with both field and headquarter experience to speak frankly on a broad range of development issues;
  • Platform Speaking: This interview series offers you exclusive interviews with people driving rural reform in the developing world. Although their views do not necessarily represent the policy of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development or of their respective organisations, they address our core concerns.

Pillar III – Aid Effectiveness

We provide joint support to the harmonisation and alignment (H&A) of procedures and practices in rural development in line with the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness of March, 2005 by:

• Working towards joint principles for donors supporting agriculture and rural development programmes in order to ensure improved coordination and more effective outputs of these programmes;
• Facilitating enhanced donor coordination and alignment to African countries’ strategies with respect to the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP);
• Working in selected countries — Cambodia, Nicaragua and Vietnam — to:
  • Identify the conditions which promote donor coordination and harmonisation in practice to better understand what is needed to make aid more effective;
  • Link donor coordination at global level with sectoral and operational strategies and requirements at country-level;
  • Actively facilitate donor harmonisation and alignment of donor activities in our partner-countries as an independent ‘honest broker’.

Additionally we are hosting inter-country workshops on the formulation and implementation of programme-based approaches.

These activities are complemented by thorough analysis of the new modes of delivery in rural development under the new aid architecture. Platform Studies include an in-depth analysis of sector-wide approaches in agriculture and rural development, a consultation process about aid effectiveness and the role of civil society organisations and a study about the rural focus of poverty reduction strategy papers (to be released soon).

The Consensus Pyramid

(updated soon) 

Acknowledging the institutional differences among our members and associates, we jointly agreed on the Platform “Consensus Pyramid” which illustrates the different levels of understanding and consensus within our work.

The Platform Consensus Pyramid: issues identified and agreed upon
by members of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development
(the arrows indicate the dynamic nature of these topics).

The basis of all our activities are the individual policies for agriculture and rural development, built upon the institutional structures of each member or associate organisation. Naturally, it is not feasible to find a consensus on every detail of our day-to-day work.

However, we all face the same challenges and problems in the delivery of aid in agriculture and rural development. In June 2006, our members found consensus on ten Hot Topics which we all think pose the greatest challenge to our work in the years to come.

We furthermore agreed on commissioning joint studies and analyses on problems and bottlenecks in donor harmonisation to find appropriate solutions (e.g. Global SWAp Analysis and Rural Focus of PRSPs).

What’s more, we found common ground on fundamental issues like The Role of Agriculture and Rural Development in Achieving the MDGs or the Joint Donor Concept on Rural Development.

The Platform’s Mission Statement is standing on top of the Consensus Pyramid, reflecting our core values and agreed upon by all our members. It guides our work and constitutes the ‘umbrella’ for all our activities.