Focal points: An interview with Brian Baldwin

Brian Baldwin is the Vice-Chair of the Global Donor Platform and a Senior Operations Advisor for the International Fund on Agricultural Development (IFAD). In this video he talks about the successes of the Forum – and why it is necessary to involve Parliamentarians into rural development policies.

The Global Donor Platform is an alliance of 34 donor institutions, including agencies in France, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Germany the European Commission, the World Bank and others. Each agency has a so-called “Focal Point”, a contact who mediates between his own agency and coordinating organs in the Global Donor Platform.

http://vimeo.com/21764373

Breakout session: Key role of women in achieving food security

43% of all smallholder farmers in developing countries are women. And owing to the difficulty of obtaining land, loans and marketing channels, they are about 15-20 percent less productive than male farmers. Improving women farmers’ roles in agricultural development would mean giving a boost to food security.

At the Forum on Rural Development, a breakout session was devoted to the key role of women in achieving food security. Participants were quickly convinced that women farmers’ issues cannot be seen in isolation, but should rather be seen as an economic and social issue – and participants stressed that the focus on “women issues” should be dropped in favor of a broader perspective on “gender issues”.

One of the main solutions of how to approach the gender issue is to give women a stronger political voice through women farmers’ associations. These could not only unite women behind a common cause and serve as a forum for education and discussion, but also enable them to go beyond the mere production of crops and into processing of food.

Some of the concrete measures that the breakout session came up with included giving women access to ICTs, supporting them while taking into consideration their multiple roles in the family and society, and targeting investment in women’s knowledge, training, innovation, capacity building for decision-making.

Most importantly, however, participants agreed that women needed to be able to raise their voice – and if necessary, to confront the interests of men who have stakes to lose.

Focal Points: An interview with Willem Olthof

Willem Olthof is currently tasked with agricultural development issues in DG Development of the European Commission. Besides, he is the Focal Point for the Global Donor Platform, sharing Commission ideas and interests with other members of the platform. In this video he talks about his work as a focal point and his impressions of the Forum.

The Global Donor Platform is an alliance of 34 donor institutions, including agencies in France, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Germany the European Commission, the World Bank and others. Each agency has a so-called “Focal Point”, a contact who mediates between his own agency and coordinating organs in the Global Donor Platform.

http://vimeo.com/21757834

Side event: Rural demography and urban/rural links

Armed with a brown-bag lunch, participants were invited to join side events between the morning and afternoon parts of the breakout sessions. The French government’s side event focused on rural demography and the links between urban and rural areas.

Ms Dominique Harre, teaching at the University Paris VII, presented the findings of a study on urban areas in Africa and in particular in the golf of Benin, in Ethiopia and around Lake Victoria. She highlighted that not only cities are facing increased demographic pressure in the future, but also rural areas. In particular, the diminishing surface of arable land is becoming a problem, due to climate change and due to increasing competition for land. What the Africapolis report found is that towns and small cities are expected to grow in a linear way, increasing pressure on rural areas and on agriculture. By 2015, the level of 100 inhabitants per km² is likely to be surpassed in West Africa.

After the Africapolis report, Mr Bruno Losch, working for the World Bank and CIRAD, presented the results of the RuralStruc programme.  It focused on two main development in Africa, namely increasing demographic and increasing economic pressure. “In the near future, we will see 17 million new arrivals on the African labor market per year,” the chair of the discussion, Bruno Vindel from the French Development Agency (AFD), resumed in a conversation with your blogger. “11 million of them will be in the rural areas, so there is a need for a very dynamic rural development policy.”

International and national policies aiming at tackling demographic pressure should most importantly implicate those concerned at the local level, participants of the discussion agreed. “More we advance toward regional politics, more we have the possibility of creating a forum of discussion in which ideas can be debated,” said Bruno Vindel.

Focal Points: An interview with Damien Fontaine

The Global Donor Platform is an alliance of 34 donor institutions, including agencies in France, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Germany the European Commission, the World Bank and others. Each agency has a so-called “Focal Point”, a contact who mediates between his own agency and coordinating organs in the Global Donor Platform.

Damien Fontaine is the Focal Point in the Directorate General Development Cooperation in Belgium. In this interview, he talks about his activities as a Focal Point and his impressions from the European Forum on Rural Development.

http://vimeo.com/21749693

Media coverage of the conference

While the Forum on Rural Development is going into its final session and articles about all sessions continue to appear on this blog, you may also have a look at the Media Corner, where you find latest articles that international media are writing about the Forum.