Transcript PROGRAMME FONDS DE DEVELOPPEMENT EN ZONE …

SAHELIAN AREAS
DEVELOPMENT FUND
(FODESA)
1999 – 2009
MAP OF MALI
FODESA INTERVENTION AREAS
MAIN OBJECTIVE
• To help reduce the grip of poverty on
rural families in the Sahelian zone of
Mali by:
Increasing their income;
Improving their living conditions.
To meet this objective, the
programme intends to:
• initiate and promote a process of
sustainable, participatory development
• Satisfy communities’ requests when these
will lead to improvements in household
income and well-being
• satisfy requests for essential social
infrastructure
COMPONENTS…
•
•
•
The programme is structured around
three components:
support for local development
development of decentralized financial
services
programme management
Support for Local Development
• allows the financing of micro projects selected by villages
or groups within villages according to their priorities; these
microprojects encompass:
• basic socio-economic infrastructure giving people access
to a minimum of public services
• productive projects ensuring a sustainable income for the
beneficiaries
• environmental projects to protect and restore natural
resources
• this component also includes a major subcomponent
covering capacity-building for all the programme partners
Developement of Decentralised
Financial Services
• satisfaction of the current demand for
setting up new savings and credit banks
• Financing the costs of setting up banks, as
well as a refinancing and guarantee fund to
facilitate women’s access to credit
Programme Management
• implementation of the programme by
national and regional private law
associations of beneficiaries
• provision of staff and technical support
• direct supervision of the programme by
IFAD
STRATEGY
Carried out in Mali’s Sahelian zone:
• a zone marked by irregular rainfall, growing
pressure on land, and emigration
• the fundamental principle is the use, when
implementing activities, of available and,
tested know-how in the public services, the
private sector and NGOs
The FODESA Programme
a response to real community demand of
• on the condition that local resources be
mobilized
• and that village groups be established to
undertake the activity
Eligible Requests Include:
• investment in financial services and
production
• social and environmental infrastructure
• strengthening of community capacities
Implementation is carried out
• under the responsibility of community
members with FODESA support
• as partnership between village groups,
FODESA, public services and private
enterprises.
SOME RESULTS
From the actual start of activities in 2000
until today, the programme has achieved:
• The organization of 179 information
meetings in villages
• support for the holding of 264 participatory
diagnosis sessions
Results (continued)
• support for the implementation of 177
microprojects
• functional literacy training benefiting 2 137 people
• technical and management training of 1 423
members of microproject management committees
• support for the creation of eight mutual savings
and loan funds
• support for setting up three programme
management associations including a number of
key farmers’ organizations
CONSTRAINTS AND SOLUTIONS
difficulties in mobilizing beneficiaries’ contributions: a series
of bad harvests, irregular rainfall and other disasters, for
example desert locust plagues, mean that people in the zone
concerned have real difficulties in mobilizing their
contributions to the implementation of their project
Solution: to adapt support to local conditions:
•
by progressively helping people to choose projects for which
they can mobilize their contributions
•
by anticipating special emergency support in case of disaster
(for example locusts)
•
poor capacity of local service and work providers: the use of
local know-how, encouraged and favoured by the programme,
following the limited volume of works (village scale) often
comes up against the providers’ lack of skills and resources;
1.
Constraints/Solutions (continued)
2. difficulties in mobilizing women for training outside their
villages or for periods of more than a week
Solution: sensitizing of men and leaders; shortening the length
of training courses; bringing training locations as close as
possible to the women
Constraints/Solutions (continued)
3.
too large an intervention zone, so that interventions
become too dispersed
Solution: circumscribing the intervention zone in the hope of
reaching a critical mass of visible actions
4.
difficulties in using documents and other
communications from IFAD produced in English
Solution: the use of French is requested in order to avoid poor
understanding of documents and delays resulting from
prior translation made by the programme
Lessons learned midway through
programme implementation
• The sustainability of the projects executed or the
viability of development operations initiated by
the programme depends to a large extent on the
level of beneficiary participation in their
conception, implementation, running and
evaluation; it has been observed that the
programmes that run properly are those initiated
by the people themselves without outside
influence .
Lessons Learned
• Viability and participation mean that in the context of project
implementation the target population must not be viewed as
beneficiaries but rather as responsible people in charge of the
identification implementation and management of the projects being
carried out.
• The feeling of being active, truly responsible and committed
participants is stronger among the population in the context of the
demand approach than in projects where the decision to implement has
been taken outside their community.
• It has been observed that with the demand approach, the population
shows a definite tendency to propose microprojects likely to generate
short-term benefits; even if participatory diagnosis reveals constraints
linked to severe degradation of natural resources, they rarely propose
projects aimed at solving these.
Lessons Learned
• The demand approach is also not sensitive to activities concerning the
development and diffusion of technologies where the anticipated
results are usually long-term; no such request has been recorded since
the start of the programme.
•
Approaches other than the demand approach are needed for
implementation of projects aimed at long-term results; project
conception should therefore take different intervention methods into
account in order to integrate short-term, medium-term and long-term
solutions.
• The development of activities relating to information management and
communications, both inside and outside the project, is as important in
a multi-partner programme are the pursuit of training and study
activities and the accomplishment of the project objectives’ tasks.