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East African Community (EAC) should focus more on implementation of agricultural policies

Posted by Ann Turinayo Thursday, November 7, 2013 0 comments

By Betty Mwakelemu Tole
Uganda's Minister of Agriculture,
Hon Tress Bucyanayandi tours the
IFADAfrica/KMP stall.
The IFADAfrica Knowledge Management Network and the Rural Finance Knowledge Management Partnership (KMP) have together with IFAD ESA participated in the International Symposium and Exhibition on Agricultural Development currently in progress at Serena Hotel, Kampala.  IFADAfrica/KMP is show-casing how it works with IFAD-supported projects to integrate knowledge management and learning for better results.    
IFADAfrica/KMP have taken part in the symposium cluster sessions since 5 October 2013. The parallel cluster sessions have been organized around three topics: Production, Productivity and Market Access; Knowledge Systems and Business Development; and Human Capital, Natural Resources and Policies.
I attended the cluster session on Human Capital, Natural Resources and Policies, where Dr. Ajayi Oluyede, a key discussant, made comments based on Jean Mbonigaba’s presentation on Policies, Institutional Framework and International Development Interventions.  Dr. Oluyede highlighted five main points from the presentation:
  • Defining the real issue of concern in relation to policies, noting that Africa was not short of policies and strategies, but lacked in implementation;
  • Focus on evidence based policy making, which requires good data. In communicating data to policy makers, he proposes the need to outline how it relates to national development, present the various policy scenarios or implications, and the linkages;
  •  The value of policy stakeholder consultation – he posed some questions such as what are the concerns of the stakeholders, what issues bother them in agriculture? To illustrate this point, he quoted an African saying “You can not shave a man’s head in his absence”;
  • The need to develop case studies of success; and
  • Come up with policies that embody the future of agriculture - what is the future of agriculture in the East African Community (EAC) given the advent of oil? What lessons can be drawn from similar experiences in West and Central Africa?


An illustration of the four scenarios
Ali Hersi, Regional Director, Society for International Development in East Africa, shared a presentation on Scenarios. Scenarios are useful in bringing key actors together to explore future uncertainty, and to re-think and re-organize current structures for more robust policies and strategies. He presented four socio-economic scenarios developed with policy makers, private sector, CSOs, academia and media under the Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security program based on two key drivers of change (regional integration, and mode of governance) that are highly relevant for the future of food security, environments and livelihoods in the region.

Berkeley - Great experience. Ready to be scaled up?

Posted by Mattia Prayer Galletti 0 comments

Greetings from Berkeley. 6 weeks have gone already. Very intensive and productive time. My graduate seminar has absorbed quite a bit of energy but has been extremely rewarding. Competent and motivated students,  rich discussions, great learning, for me as well. Also interesting to explore linkages with the curriculums of other UC Berkeley courses that deal with international development. The duration of my course was extended to cover more topics. I gave additional talks at  the Master of Development Practice, the course of  Sustainable Development in Latin America and the course of Political Economy of Hunger. I also received an invitation to talk at the course of Global Poverty and Practice.  All this triggered by the tam tam made by the students. Only problem is that additional courses mean additional students… Many leave the talks eager to have follow-up conversations. Several of them inquire about internship opportunities. All this takes time. Tomorrow I am asked to speak before 100 students who want to know how UN agencies work and I know that it will not be easy to manage expectations.
Few professors approached me enquiring why my graduate seminar seems so popular. One told me: "I am really jealous". The answer is simple: students, graduate students in particular, want to connect to real life endeavors and to what development agencies are doing. They want to know both success stories and the difficulties and failures that we experience. (In this regard last week’s FailFaire came at the most appropriate time. Well done). They want to know what are the enabling conditions that can generate results and impact and where they can make the difference. This is great!
The preliminary conclusions I would draw are the following: i) there is an unmet demand in academies for practical experience; ii) IFAD can contribute to meet this demand by sharing its experience;  iii) there are young talents out there who are willing to make the difference and deserve an opportunity to show what they can do.  Perhaps we can discuss during a lunchtime seminar upon my return to Rome if and how this experience can be institutionalized. In the meantime, please let me know if anyone is interested to offer internship opportunities.

Focus on East Africa

Posted by Ann Turinayo Wednesday, November 6, 2013 0 comments

Highlights from the International Symposium and Exhibition on Agricultural Development in the East Africa Community Partner States.


The Vice President of Uganda (Chief Guest),
 H.E Edward Ssekandi,
visits the IFAD stall at the exhibition
A traditional dance troupe doing Ugandan dances set a celebratory mood at the high end Serena Hotel in Kampala on the first day of the International Symposium and Exhibition on Agricultural Development in the East Africa Community partner states in Kampala Uganda. The symposium organized by Kilimo Trust in partnership with the East African Community (EAC) secretariat and ASARECA focused on the theme “Lessons from the past 50 years and prospects for the future” because all the EAC member states are around the time of celebrating 50 years of independence. The symposium and exhibition was officially opened by the Vice President of Uganda, His Excellency Edward Ssekandi, who emphasized the importance of the East African Common Market in promoting agriculture. “EAC common market is a good opportunity for building economies of scale…an opportunity that should be utilized to ensure food security,” said Ssekandi.



Symposium partners including IFAD, BMGF, CTA and USAID also made statements. On behalf of the IFAD president, the Country Director for Burundi, Mr. Hamed Haidara presented a statement in which he highlighted the importance of smallholder agriculture. “There are unprecedented opportunities to create wealth and eliminate hunger by developing agriculture. And by agriculture, I mean smallholder agriculture,” said Haidara.

Haidara Hamed, IFAD Country Director, ESA
shares his statement
The well organized symposium and exhibition has brought many actors in the agriculture sector together – the youth, private sector, public sector, the donor community, local and international organizations, and participants from EAC member states of Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda.
Key note speeches and papers on ‘Lessons for East Africa from Asia and Latin America’, ‘Leap-frogging Agricultural Successes into the next decade and beyond –issues and lessons from CAADP implementation’, as well as ‘Agricultural development and food security in East Africa: overview of challenges and prospects’ were shared. These accentuated the importance of investment in research and improved technologies for the agriculture sector such as a move from the hand hoe to mechanized tilling, from rain-fed agriculture to irrigation, among others, for increased production and productivity. Uma Lele, one of the speakers, noted that a decline in public investment in agriculture leads to a directly proportionate decline in investment by the private sector.
The CAADP presentation highlighted lessons learned from the past ten years, especially, the need to demonstrate results and impact and harnessing private sector investments in agriculture. Over all, CAADP is relevant now as it was ten years ago.
some of the IFAD delegates at the symposium
and Exhibition

The afternoon session involved parallel cluster sessions on ‘Production, Productivity and Market Access’, ‘Knowledge Systems and Business Development’, and ‘Human Capital, Natural Resources and Policies’. Details from the cluster discussions will be shared on this space in due course.


Think anew, act anew #failfaire

Posted by RimaAlcadi Tuesday, November 5, 2013 0 comments

by Rima Alcadi

Dave Snowden, seen here at IFAD’s FAILFaire,
is the founder and chief scientific officer of Cognitive Edge,
a research network focusing on complexity theory in sense-making.
A great piece of advice that I offer today – if you have an hour available, don’t bother reading this blog and go directly to the real thing (click here for the complete intervention). Dave Snowden is a great speaker and his intervention is certainly worth listening to.

Dave kicks off with the concept of naturalising sense-making: how do we make sense in the world so that we can act in it? do we know enough to act? In development, we never know enough to act with certainty and we should build on the way people have evolved to be, rather than on how we would like them to be.

Systems thinking is different from complexity thinking. In systems thinking an ideal future state is defined and then there is an attempt to close the gap. In complexity thinking, the starting point is to describe where we are, and from there, determine what we can change. There is a fundamentally different shift in thinking – from an engineering approach to an ecological approach, whereby we manage the evolutionary potential of the present.

There are several techniques for sharing failure, Dave tells us. We have become very good at this since we recognise that avoidance of failure is a more successful strategy than imitating success. So the brain imprints failure faster than success. Dave describes three techniques for us:


  •  Displacement. Don’t tell people to tell the story of their own failure as they will gain it. Ask them to tell a story to show failure. If you ask people to tell a story of how things could fail, they will revert to the truth - as it is difficult to invent such stories out of the blue.
  •  Ritual. Rituals change cognitive paths in the brain. Changing costume changes the way people think, allowing people to do/say things they wouldn’t otherwise do/say.
  •  Process. In modern organizations, there are extensive rules about what you can and cannot do. Modern organizations are dependent on their employees to break the rules in order to get the job done! Most rules are to protect organizations against prosecution and not about what they are purportedly for. Dave underscore the importance of cognitive activation: when you break a rule, you need to use heuristics and you therefore become a lot more alert and thus a lot safer. Heuristics is a dominant control mechanism used by humans for conditions of insecurity and that allow for ambiguity.

Dave also delves into three key concepts:

  • Exaptation. Many things did not evolve for a purpose. It is not about survival of the fittest, but of the luckiest. A capability that evolved for one function exapts into another. Generalists can exapt better. Exaptation is a key process, especially in development.
  • Coherence. Coherence is neither empirically true nor a gut feeling – it is half way. We do something not because it is a good idea, but because it is coherent.
  • Complexity. Agency in human systems is more narrative-based than it is people-based. If you don’t understand the stories of a group you will not understand how they make decisions.

Systems can be orderly, chaotic or complex-adaptive. Orderly systems are rule-based. The more bureaucratic an organization, the more people have to work in order to make the system work despite itself. So failure is disguised and when it comes it is catastrophic. A huge amount of energy is invested on managing the system and there is massive inefficiency. Chaos, on the other hand is a system in which there are no constraints and complete randomness prevails. If chaos is understood, it can be used constructively. For example, there is a “wisdom of crowds”: averaging individual assessment of many knowledgeable people can bring to greater precision. In a complex adaptive system, the constraints modify the behaviour and the behaviour modifies the constraints. So here the constraints and the behaviours are co-evolving. Once a pattern forms from the interaction, it cannot be reversed. The system is constantly evolving, constantly changing.

In systems thinking, there are multiple drivers, and there is little or no evidence to understand what the causes are. Levels of uncertainty are very high and often, we are confusing correlation with causation. A complex adaptive systems is not causal, it is dispositional. We can measure its disposition to move in certain directions, but we cannot predict that pulling a certain lever will lead to a specific outcome.

How do we measure success without people defining in advance what success would be? Meaning is emerging and is not objective. People interpret stories differently. We need to start democratising the process of meaning making and cannot have only a few people interpreting meaning. “Meaning” needs to become a problematic word and stories should be captured in multiple languages, recognising that once a story is transcribed, we lose the meaning.

What are the implications?
Dave wraps up by quoting Lincoln’s famous phrase: “As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.” We need to deal with high levels of uncertainty. It is not about creating failure but learning from it and learning before we have it. People can be triggered into a heightened state of alert when it is more likely that failure may happen.

West Africa's food potential and the case for staple foods - IFAD/FAO analyses regional value chains

Posted by Patrina Pink 1 comments


The domino effect of the financial meltdown, speculative pressure on once ignored food markets and the global energy crisis sent food commodity prices careening in 2007. Consumers would be forced to dive deep into their pockets even as their incomes shrunk against the gargantuan demands of the international market. Yet, for West Africa, the effects were nothing new, for years the region’s citizens have battled sprinting commodities matched only by a legacy of inadequate food production.

West Africa's risky  reliance on imported staple foods is restricting smallholder farmers from their own markets. Enabling market access is not just another form of outreach but is mitigating against a fundamental injustice. If we accept that people have a right to food security, then for producers this is inextricably linked to market security. If West Africa can improve its staple food production, then it not only saves potential billions in foreign exchange, it can dramatically improve the livelihoods of its large population of smallholder farmers.

At the recently held CFS, Aziz Elbehri Senior Economist at the FAO, presented the preliminary findings of a five year study on how to scale up the value chains of  commonly eaten staple crops like Maize, Rice, Sorghum and Cassava in the region. The product of a joint FAO and IFAD partnership spearheaded by IFAD’s West and Central Africa Division and FAO’s Trade and Markets Division, it  builds on a previous European Union funded research on selected value chains in the region. The report  identified best practices across the region and also explored ways government and private sector could collaborate.



     West African staple crops on sale in Rome's Vittorio Emanuele Market
 
Rallying the actors

The food price crisis and its effects on national import bills was a wake up call for some of the region's governments . "There was an increased attention to staple foods...we saw national initiatives to improve maize, rice and cassava value chains,’’ said Elbehri. The staple crops study reviewed these national investment strategies and their implementation, researchers analysed how investments should be prioritised in local contexts, how to improve the competitiveness of relevant chains and more importantly, how to ensure that the potential growth that comes as a result of this scaling up is pro-poor and gender responsive. It analysed cassava value chains in Ghana and Cameroon, rice and sorghum in Mali , rice in Senegal and Maize in Burkina Faso among others.   
Promoting a multi-actor model of partnership, including  public agencies, credit agencies, agro-industry and producers, the report stressed the importance of capacity development, particularly for producer organisations in the region.
West African governments were also urged to provide a ‘balance of domestic policies with regional trade facilitation’ and the report suggested that the region was missing a unique opportunity to bring lucrative informal trade networks into the formal economy.
Mamadou Sissoko, honorary president of The Network of Peasant Organizations and Producers in West Africa (ROPPA), who was invited to review the findings, pointed to several areas which he felt could be more widely explored by researchers.
Sissoko said that governments and the international community must see agriculture as a ‘public good’ and that systems that allow fair pricing to farmers must be developed and easily accessible. He also stressed the need for calamity funds and access to improved technologies. A farmer himself, Sissoko then advocated for the use of animal traction which he said could increase farm production by sixty percent for many smallholders.

Beyond reporting

The report may prove to be a valuable asset to governments developing value chain investment strategies. Unquestionably, if this study promotes smallholder’s inclusion then it must also be accessible (at the minimum) to the region's producer organisations. If  it is to go beyond reporting then it must be transformative. The findings should be shared as widely as possible for the benefit of all the relevant stakeholders and in languages and media that can be easily understood and appreciated.
A section on the lessons learnt from the maize value chain could become the basis of a teaching or advocacy tool for these producers. This document (and all relevant IFAD/FAO studies) should feed into a knowledge bank and be shared with partners, especially the groups that need empowering information most - producer networks.
Through dialogue with regional partners working on staple crop value chains (such as WFP’s the Purchase for Progress initiative or federal cooperative agencies), valuable lessons learnt can be shared with the management and membership of producer organisations. This would help to sensitize regional groups to the potential bottlenecks within their value chains as well as help them create appropriate solutions.

If West African countries are to scale up their staple crop production, then as the study noted, partnerships, knowledge sharing and an inclusion of all actors – particularly women and other marginalized groups -- is essential. IFAD must continue to partner with other UN agencies to increase global understanding of local challenges, while simultaneously ensuring that those at the grassroots remain engaged.


7/11/2013: FAO's Trade and Markets Division indicates that plans are in place to distribute publications based on the study to producer organisations in the region. 
Patrina Pink is an intern in the Communications Division of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD. She is also completing a Masters in Human Development and Food Security. 

Development Practitioners Support the IFAD Case for Scaling Up

Posted by miriam Monday, November 4, 2013 1 comments



By Betty Makelemu Tole

IFAD staff, representatives of other UN agencies, partners, non-governmental organizations, community based, and private sector organizations were on 31 October 2013 united in supporting the case for scaling up impact of successful development interventions through South-South and Triangular Cooperation.  These discussions were held on the fourth day of the Global South-South Development (GSSD) Expo taking place in Nairobi, Kenya on 28 October to 1 November 2013, at a Partnership Forum organized and facilitated by IFAD.  The forum “South-South Cooperation for Impact at Scale: Towards a Community of Practice and Learning Alliance” was organized with the aim to set the stage for a systematic approach to future dialogue on South-South Cooperation as a special and important case for scaling up. 
Nadine Gbossa, Country Director and Head of Regional Office, Nairobi
Nadine Gbossa, Country Director and Head of IFAD Regional Office in Nairobi, in her welcoming remarks highlighted the role of scaling up in facing up to the challenge of addressing the high poverty levels in rural areas, and also the value of working together to develop sustainable partnerships.

The thrust of the session was a presentation on scaling up made by Johannes Linn, Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution in which he provided a definition of scaling up, types and linkages in scaling up and lessons for implementation. He defined scaling up as -  “about more impact by improving more people’s lives on a lasting basis… its not about individual projects, but about supporting longer term programmes of engagement and building momentum…” Types of scaling up include: expansion of services to more people in a given geographical area, horizontal, vertical and functional scaling up.  Integral to scaling up is identifying the intervention that is being scaled up; having a vision of what a scaled-up intervention might look like; identifying the drivers expected to push the scaling-up process; creating spaces for the initiative to grow such as the financial space, natural/environmental space, policy, political, cultural, partnership and learning spaces; and putting in place pathways that define the movement of the idea/innovation to scaling up as illustrated in the figure below. 
Innovation, learning, and scaling up as an iterative processScaling Up

During the sharing of institutional experiences on scaling up, H. Kato, JICA highlighted the challenges they have faced in scaling up: dealing with the practitioner’s mindset, and the fear of higher risks presented by scaling up, “the larger the cooperation, the more the risks,” said Kato. Liu Ke of IFAD, China highlighted the need to connect scaling up cases/lessons with regional and global scaling up initiatives  (scale the scale up), identifying new partners and opportunities for synergies, and exploring new implementation mechanisms. 

Comments from country representatives and partners of IFAD on scaling up

Argentina – spaces need to be expanded especially financial space and the role of the private sector in financing.  Scaling up requires human resource development, and social space - we have to focus on projects that maximize on social inclusion. 
Development Partners Following Proceedings
ICRAF – we need to test multiple pilots and report on failure; otherwise we end up having fraud.
UNDP – UNDP acts as a knowledge broker, focusing on identifying scalable south solutions that are fully analyzed and demonstrated to have impact on people’s lives. The knowledge includes contractual knowledge and knowledge about pathways.
World Bank – promotes knowledge hubs as an approach for scaling up.  They have established a community of practice on knowledge hubs focusing on how to transform organizations, engage in strategic partnerships and how to document results.
FAO – South-South Cooperation is not an end to itself but a means to an end.  There is need for uptake of development solutions, strengthening of knowledge networks and fostering an enabling environment for South-South Cooperation. 

UNEP – Always keep in mind that ecosystems play a role in ensuring effectiveness of scaling up to achieve long term sustainability. 
Participants following the Scaling Up Discussions

UN-HABITAT – To scale up, we have to balance between long-term development solutions and short term immediate needs of the citizens.

Private sector organization in Kenya – we need to think the unthinkable and do the undoable. Scale up should be driven by entrepreneurship and making profit.

Climate Change Knowledge Network – scaling up needs champions, people to should out for you.

Mr. Cheikh Sourang, Senior Programme Manager and Focal Point, South-South and Triangular Cooperation at IFAD, facilitated the forum.  Mr. Yiping Zhou, the Director, UN Office for South-South Cooperation also participated in the forum. 

The GSSD Expo 2013 draws to a close on Friday, 1st November 2013. 

Make more misstakes #failfaire

Posted by RimaAlcadi 0 comments

by Rima Alcadi

Picture of Tim Harford, by Barbara Gravelli
Tim Harford is an economist. Tim is also: a member of the Financial Times editorial board; a broadcaster; an award-winning speaker (see his TED-Talk); Winner of the 2006 Bastiat Prize for economic journalism; author of several books, including The Undercover Economist and Adapt; and the only economist in the world to run a problem page, called 'Dear Economist'. As of 29 October 2013, Tim is also the first speaker at IFAD’s first Fail-Faire!


What did Tim talk to us about?

Tim told us to make more mistakes. This is because if we do anything worthwhile doing, we will inevitably make mistakes. Therefore, we also need to learn how to manage these mistakes. He told us about Twyla Tharp’s musical “Movin' Out” - a jukebox musical featuring the songs of Billy Joel. The show was unusual: all the vocals were performed by a pianist and band while the dancers acted out the songs dialogue. It was an innovation, it was difficult to implement and it required a lot of collaboration. Tharp was working with music she was not familiar with and she was breaking down barriers. The musical was initially labelled a total and catastrophic failure – “embarrassingly naïve”, “hideous failure” were some of the adjectives used by renowned critics to describe it. Moreover, her failure was incredibly public.

If you do not fail, you are not being innovative, you are not being creative and not doing anything new. But why is it so difficult to admit and to fix a failure? There are 4 obstacles to productive failure:

1. Conformity. The power of seeking conformity is compelling, as humorously demonstrated by Solomon Asch back in 1950s (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments). Asch was fascinated by the issue of conformity. Asch concluded that people conform because they doubt themselves as everybody else is doing something else and/or because they don’t want to make a fuss and go against the crowd. And there is an enormous stake involved in agreeing with our colleagues: Asch demonstrated that we conform even when there is nothing to lose, so imagine how much harder it is not to conform when our career and self-image are on the line! What is the cure to this – how can the pressure to conform be eased? Well, it turns out that when we are not alone in disagreeing, then it becomes much simpler to voice our true opinions. A single person in the room who voices a different opinion is enough to enable us to deviate as well. Promoting diversity in opinions is thus tremendously important to create creative ideas: so one person voicing a different opinion (even if wrong!) is bringing in enormous value by breaking the spell of conformity and allowing us all to express ourselves more freely.

2. Poor feedback loops. We can only find out if something is a good idea by providing feedback. When feedback loops are bad, it is impossible to find out if something is good or bad. Ensuring that there are good feedback loops is extremely important.

3. Consequences. Sometimes the benefits of success may be small but the risk of failure is quite large. We don’t really want innovations in certain kinds of systems. For instance, in nuclear power plants, we don’t really want people innovating in areas that could lead to failures. We need to ensure that we take adequate stock of what are the possible consequences of failure. Most of the time we will find that the consequences are small, and it is certainly worth innovating.

4. Our own psychology. When we invest a lot of time and energy on something, we have the tendency to carry on rather than admit we are wrong. This is referred to as the “sunk cost bias”: it implies persisting with bad decisions as a result of our irrational attachment to costs that cannot be recovered any longer. This means that we are often not willing to admit we failed and learn from our experience, so then we risk throwing good money after bad money.

Tim talked about what it takes to fail in a complex world, and about the fact that it is “normal” for development-related activities to fail. We all acknowledged that the risks of failing are very high for us, because ultimately we are meant to support poor people overcome poverty. Tim’s point in this regard was not to invite us to fail more, but to expect to fail (as failure is inevitable) and admit when we do. Tim’s advice is: fail forward, fail faster, fail productively.

So what happened to Twyla Tharp and her musical “Movin' Out”? Well, Tharp had to admit that the critics were right. She decoupled the criticism from her ego and turned it into constructive advice – which she followed. A few weeks later, the show was completely reconfigured and re-designed. And then she got very good reviews and the musical was labelled a great success – to everybody’s astonishment, especially the critics’. That’s how Tharp failed forward, rather than backward: she quickly learned from her failure and kept movin'.