FODESA Program in Mali: Supporting Rural Development and Poverty Reduction

(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 intendsto: • 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;

Constraints/Solutions (continued) • 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) • 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 • 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 programmeimplementation • 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 populationmust 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 toinformation 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.

FODESA Program in Mali: Supporting Rural Development and Poverty Reduction