Scaling Up the Fight Against Rural Poverty - FIDAfrique

Chapter 4
Scaling Up in IFAD’s Operational Management
We now turn to a review of the institutional tools with which IFAD manages its operational activities.
Our aim is to assess how they support IFAD’s engagement in scaling up its successful interventions.
This is the heart of the scaling up review, since our principal purpose is to illuminate what otherwise is
often a black box of internal management approaches and procedures in donor organizations. As in the
previous chapter, our assessment is based on the review of relevant documentation and on interviews
with IFAD managers and staff. Many of the documents which we draw on are in the public domain
and easily accessible on the IFAD website (www.ifad.org). This transparency is very helpful as it
allows external review and accountability.
In this chapter we first look at how scaling up is treated in IFAD’s operational strategy and policy
documents. We then review IFAD’s approach to its country programming, project management,
portfolio review, quality enhancement and project monitoring. We close the chapter with a set of
conclusions.
A. Scaling up in IFAD’s operational strategy and policy documents
In recent years IFAD has prepared many strategy documents and policy papers. An active program of
evaluation by IFAD’s Office of Evaluation provides feedback and lessons for the Executive Board and
for management on how its strategies and policies are implemented. We have reviewed the 24 most
relevant guidance documents and evaluations to assess how scaling up is approached. The remainder
of this section summarizes out main findings.
Since 2002, the focus on scaling up has increased and become more fully articulated, especially in the
strategy documents and in the evaluation documents. However, in no document is there a detailed
treatment of scaling up as a separate strategic goal or an exploration of the scaling up process for
IFAD to follow. Scaling up is treated in close conjunction with innovation and learning, constituting a
common triad of “innovation, learning and scaling up”. Innovation is usually given a much more
detailed and intensive focus in the strategy and policy statements than scaling up.
IFAD’s policy documents and its operational guidelines have very few references and provide little
guidance on scaling up. This is unfortunate, since they represent a key link between strategy and
operational practice. Since guidelines for COSOPs and COSOP reviews also have addressed the
scaling up agenda only in a limited way (see next section), we conclude that key operational guidance
documents currently do not provide IFAD’s staff with much direction on how to implement the
institution’s broad strategy on scaling up.
Evaluation documents (including the Portfolio Reviews) have tended to focus more explicitly on
scaling up than policy statements and guidelines. But performance ratings for evaluations are treated
jointly for innovation and scaling up. The Evaluation Manual offers no guidance for the evaluation of
specific steps in the scaling up process. The evaluation of innovation and scaling up concludes that the
innovation and scaling up should in future be rated separately in evaluations and calls for the
development of scaling up process guidance. (IFAD Independent Office of Evaluation 2010)
B. Country Program Strategies – the COSOPs
IFAD’s Country Strategy Opportunities Programs (COSOPs) are frameworks for making strategic
choices about IFAD operations in a country, identifying opportunities for IFAD financing, and for
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