Panel
Geeta Sethi, GAFSP program manager
Laura Mecagni, head, IFC global agriculture and food security program
Soc Banzuela, GAFSP CSO steering committee member
Geeta Sethi
- CSO been fantastic support in GAFSP, including to ensure adequate funding and improve quality of implementation
- GAFSP is a multilateral trust fund, financing from host of donors and foundation, incl US, UK, Australia, Dutch and Gates Foundation
- Scale up assistance to LICs on agriculture and food production
- Unique partnership, governance structure, with CSOs, multilaterals, donors and recipient structures having equal voices
- IDA countries eligible, then countries with high pockets of poverty
- 18 countries, 25 projects, both public and private
- 25 million beneficiaries, 40% women
- two windows – public sector, administered by WB with close to $1bn
- funding directly to recipient countries, country led programme
- seven supervision entities – WB, ADB, IDB, AfDB, IFAD, FAO, WFP
- private sector window at IFC under Laura, $300m, five funders including Netherlands, UK, Japan
- public sector window: largest proportion going to Africa, most IDA countries
- large proportion going to agriculture productivity, but GAFSP has five pillars, now encouraging countries to come up with more comprehensive strategy, incl climate smart agriculture
- two calls for proposals to date, has has disbursed $65 million so far
- have early results of June 2010 awards of funds
- programmes have no earmarks, but lets the countries to lead the discussions and design on how to address food security
- in the fundraising strategy, donors wanting for the programmes to have windows of earmarks for activities such as climate smart agriculture
- forced us to do a review of the portfolio, conclusion narrative not been able to pick up what the programmes have been doing on the ground
- came up with e.g. 40% direct beneficiaries are women, in Rwanda there have been increased incomes – have a robust M&E system that picks this up, so the programme is beginning to bloom
- third call for proposals open
- weighting criteria are assessed by independent advisors
Laura Mecagni
- have been at IFC for 15 years on advisory services, took over GAFSP one year ago
- got extensive amount of funding, with five donors NL, US, CA, JP, UK
- most agriculture is delivered by private sector
- Objectives:
- Increase commercial potential of SME agribusiness and farmers, bringing them into local, national and global value chains
- Improve market access
- Support innovation and development in financing and technology
- Support projects that demonstrate higher productivity, lower use of water resources and inputs
- improve livelihoods of SME and small hold farmers through: improved access of finance, access to markets, access to inputs
Root capital video
- too big for micro finance, to small for financial markets
- first under new model of blended finance
Mecagni
- blended finance solutions, different type of interventions in agriculture
- from public sector to fully commercial activities: GAFSP aims for projects in the middle, either to move them into a commercial space, or that the risks are so high for commercial terms
- concessional lending available to de risk project
- objective to lead to greater development impacts
- careful about subsidies, don’t want to distort markets, but at times small subsidies
- principles for blended finance:
- Moves beyond IFC additionality
- Avoid market distortion by minimising conditionality
- Leads to sustainability
- Upholds transparency
- Root capital – a great partner, sustainable finance award some years ago
- it’s an NGO relying on foundation money, not the typical type of IFC client
- part of business doing farmer financing, aim to become self sustaining rather than relying on foundation money
- IFC can improve their risk management system, capital management, so that they can raise commercial money
- reaches 500,000 farmers
- global warehouse finance program – $20 million to help the program where it’s too risky, starting to look at projects in Africa
- private sector window just started so not many projects, but coffee exporter case in Honduras and Nicaragua – a 7 year loan, part IFC (7m) on commercial terms, part GAFSP (3m)
- IFC doesn’t normally do calls for proposal, but GAFSP does
- First round most looked for grants so only 8 of 44 met criteria, second call 73 out of 89
- Also lends to partnerships, MOU with FAO to bring complementary skill sets
- Two projects started, one diagnostic study of irrigation in Africa, forerunner to larger global irrigation programme
- June roundtable with FAO on grain storage
- M&E framework: primary indicators to be tracked by all investment projects
- Secondary indicators
Soc Banzuela
- Philippines farmers confederation in 10 countries, 3 regions
- not many outcomes yet, still very young programme, but would like to show potential of our 18 years experience and how we engage the government
- important for farmers to have control, and access to land, seeds, agroecological production technology, strong cooperatives
- project development is a key challenge, access to land is foundation for getting more input and resources
- most projects agroecological approaches, higher level interventions, incl value addition and governance
- GAFSP multi stakeholder approach
- Quite a challenge to organise IDA countries, governments, etc
- Once a project is funded, should insist being part of the steering committee
- GAFSP governance, one of the most innovative structures, with inclusivity, tradition of consensus decision making
- Cohesion of private and public window, loan vs grant component and CSO participation in the private sector window
- What can be done for the private sector window to provide concessional funding, things to be discussed at the forthcoming meeting on Monday
- Synergy and responsibility, GAFSP born out of 2008 global food crisis
- GAFSP can provide global standards and leadership, but barely reached original funding target for the facility
- Need to continue to improve ourselves, this is an imperative, not a choice