ANNUAL REPORT 2011 - IFAD

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urban poor people. We support training in business
skills and entrepreneurship for poor rural people,
together with vocational training on the job or in
training centres.
In Madagascar, results reported in 2011 indicate that
nearly 20,000 women and men have received training
in entrepreneurship through an ongoing programme
promoting apprenticeships in microenterprises and
vocational training. The programme started work in
2008 and operates in five of the country’s poorest and
most densely populated regions. A monitoring system
is being set up to determine how many of those trained
go on to find work.
Participation in local and national policy and
budgetary processes
Supporting the empowerment of poor rural people
at individual and community level also means
enabling them to have a voice in policymaking at
local and national level. We measure our
achievements in this area with two proxy indicators:
the number of people trained in community
management topics and the number of village and
community plans formulated.
Across East and Southern Africa, results in 2011
showed that over 52,000 people were trained in
community management and nearly 200 plans were
drawn up.
IFAD works with governments and communities in the
region to introduce measures and technologies that
reduce the vulnerability of poor rural communities to
climate variability and longer-term climate change.
Projects are introducing simple techniques for water
and land management that prevent damage to soils
from flooding and help conserve water. A main focus is
restoring ecosystems to bolster the resilience of
agricultural livelihoods.
Eritrea is particularly vulnerable to climate
change, given its combination of low-lying coastal
regions, arid and semi-arid areas, fragile ecosystems
and zones prone to drought and desertification.
Subsistence farmers, pastoralists, rural inhabitants
and fishing communities are all groups at risk. Their
The ongoing project in Rwanda, referred to in the
natural resources section earlier, provides a good
example of the impact of training in community
management topics. Project participants are actively
engaged in the planning, management and
supervision of activities. Eleven local watershedbased
management committees have been
established, representing local administration,
agricultural cooperatives, women, young people, the
private sector and local financial institutions. In an
innovative reversal of roles, the project’s committees
are monitoring local government performance for
project-related activities.
This approach is being replicated by another
project in Rwanda supporting the shift to marketbased
agriculture in Kirehe District in the southeast
of the country. Here, severe soil erosion and high
population density make sustainable management
of natural resources all the more important.
Helping Eritrean farmers deal with an unpredictable climate
greatest challenge is the unpredictability of rainfall,
which can range from erratic to torrential.
When heavy rain falls after a period of drought, the
water cannot penetrate the hard-caked soil and
causes floods.
Climate variability is already creating various
problems. To halt land degradation and increase the
availability of water to irrigate crops, an IFAD-funded
programme introduced soil and water conservation
technologies, such as earth or brushwood
embankments and terracing. It also introduced
microcatchment systems to reduce rainwater run-off
and increase soil infiltration. Two medium-scale spate
irrigation schemes were constructed, covering about
1,100 hectares and benefiting 1,000 farmers.