Scaling Up the Fight Against Rural Poverty - FIDAfrique

Chapter 5
IFAD’s Instruments, Knowledge, Resources and Incentives
for Scaling Up
This chapter pulls together insights into a number of important aspects of IFAD’s institutional setup
which affect its capacity to deliver on a scaling up agenda: IFAD’s operational instruments, its
knowledge management approach, and its human and financial resource allocation practices.
The analysis that the review team was able to carry out on these issues was less detailed than for the
operational management aspects addressed in the previous chapter. Therefore, our assessment is more
selective and preliminary. Conclusions and recommendations should be taken as tentative, with more
in-depth and comprehensive analysis needed in a subsequent phase of work. Most of the evidence we
have collected relies on interviews with IFAD managers and staff.
A. IFAD’s operational instruments and modalities for scaling up
IFAD has various operational instruments for engaging with countries and clients. In this section we
briefly review a number of those that have special relevance for IFAD’s ability to help scale up
programs for rural poverty reduction. We cover some of IFAD’s specific financial instruments and
approaches, its engagement in policy dialogue, and its mechanisms for partnership engagement,
including through co-financing and participation in sector-wide approaches (SWAps).
1. Financial instruments
IFAD has various ways of employing its finances that can support a scaling up agenda:
Topping up: This is a way for IFAD managers to add resources to a project that can absorb more
money than originally planned. 29 Topping up can be a useful way to expand the scope of a project, but
unless part of a well-defined scaling-up pathway it will not amount to a serious scaling up effort.
Repeater projects: A repeater project replicates, extends or scales up a successful project. However,
CPMs have tended to shy away from this practice, since there is a requirement for a formal evaluation
by IFAD’s Office of Evaluation of the original project, before the repeater project can be approved.
This is seen as a time consuming process that causes serious delays for the follow-up project.
Therefore, CPMs have preferred to modify the original project to avoid the formal designation of
repeater project, even when de facto a follow-up project was intended. The more appropriate
alternative would be to build an evaluation process from the beginning into the implementation of the
original project that would allow timely results to be available at the time of completion.
Flexible Lending Mechanism (FLM): In 1998 the FLM was introduced as a way to give IFAD and its
borrowers a longer term and more flexible instrument for engagement. 30 The instrument appears to be
29
Topping up is used especially towards the end of replenishment phase when IFAD has to use its resources on a
use or lose basis.
30
The FLM policy document describes the instrument as follows: “The main elements of the FLM include longer
loan periods (10-12 years as opposed to the typical five-to-six-year loans); a clear articulation of long-term
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