Instiglio helped to identify and define Results-based Financing (RBF) outcomes, indicators, and targets to inform future programming in rural development in Colombia. We worked closely with Socodevi, a service provider, to examine their rural development program and define outcomes, indicators, and targets that GAC could use for the future design and implementation of an RBF instrument.
Country
Colombia
Timeline
2017
Type of Project
Feasibility study
Sector
Agriculture
Project
Partners
project description
This project aimed to improve the income and livelihood of impoverished and marginalized small-holder farmers through the adoption of cocoa and cooperativism.
Decades of armed conflict and underinvestment in remote rural municipalities in Colombia has stalled the agricultural sector and marginalized small-holder farmers from markets and institutions. In 2016, multidimensional poverty affected 37.6% of Colombia’s rural population, compared to 12.1% in urban areas (DANE, 2017). Empowering the country’s rural population, particularly rural women, and improving their access to formal agricultural markets, improved technology, credit, and technical assistance, can lead to higher incomes and improved livelihoods.
Through this project Global Affairs Canada aimed to consolidate cocoa commercializing cooperatives and empower female producers from the Colombian Andes bordering the Amazon and the Orinoco basins, where geographic conditions are ideal to produce cocoa – a highly valued commodity in both national and international markets.
Socodevi and the Canadian Government are exploring Results-Based Financing as a vehicle to achieve greater results in their approach to empower and improve the livelihoods of small-holder farmers through the adoption of cocoa.
Socodevi’s approach to rural development operates at the micro, meso, and macro levels: offering technical assistance to cocoa farmers, administrative and commercial strengthening to the cocoa cooperatives, while working with local actors to improve the agro-economic services they offer to these farmers and their cooperatives.
Instiglio leveraged its unique experience designing and implementing Results-Based Financing tools in Colombia and sub-Saharan Africa to give advise on the technical aspects pertaining to conditioning the funding of this project to agricultural, social, economic and environmental outcomes; such as improved income for cocoa farmers, hectares with agroforestry systems, and gender equality. This work involves working side-by-side with Socodevi and Global Affairs Canada in the selection of payment metrics and targets, as well as collecting lessons from other experiences which promote the adoption of cocoa in Colombia.
This project was the first preliminary design of an Results-Based Financing scheme in Colombia’s agricultural sector. Its implementation would have added value to the knowledge behind Results-Based Financing programs in agriculture and also serve as a model for other programs looking to improve the livelihoods of small farmers through product adoption and strengthened cooperatives. The project could also further establish a cocoa producing node in Colombia, with long-term effects for the region’s development and local economy.
