ACDI/VOCA Hosts Discussion of World Bank’s 2008 World Development Report
For the first time in 25 years, agriculture and its role in fighting poverty will be the focus of the World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR), due to be released in October 2007. As the World Bank says on its website, “A reconsideration of agriculture’s role in development has been long overdue.”
The WDR, the World Bank's best-known contribution to thinking about development, is published annually and is an invaluable guide to the economic, social and environmental state of the world today. Each year the WDR provides in-depth analysis of a specific aspect of development. ACDI/VOCA has assisted in the development of the 2008 report by contributing information about its extraordinarily productive work with Ethiopian cooperatives, as well as by hosting a forum that facilitated NGO input on its content.
At the forum held on Feb. 1, Alain de Janvry and Derek Byerlee, WDR co-directors, spoke with over 40 representatives of international development NGOs at ACDI/VOCA headquarters. The dialogue took place at the invitation of the U.S. NGO Working Group on the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Rural Poverty. Susan Schram, working group chair and ACDI/VOCA vice president for outreach and cooperative programs, chaired the discussion.
Following an overview of the report presented by Byerlee and de Janvry, a panel of respondents critiqued the draft report. The panel included Steve Brescia, associate vice president for program learning and innovation, World Neighbors; Katharine Coon, nutritional sociologist, International Center for Research on Women; Paul Guenette, vice president of sub-Saharan Africa, ACDI/VOCA; and Kevin Lowther, director, Southern Africa Region, Africare.
The working group praised the WDR effort, noting that the influential report will provide broad visibility to the important role of international agricultural and rural development, an area where investment in recent years has lagged. The group also noted issues that it felt were not sufficiently addressed in the report: the role of gender, climate change, challenges posed by existing trade regimes and the impact of the global agri-food system on smallholders and the economies of developing countries.
A draft of the report will be posted on the web in April and will be available for public comment to those who register on the WDR website. The authors are eager to collect additional case studies where an organization has identified a relevant policy problem, addressed the issue through a development program and achieved a sustainable solution. NGOs and other organizations will have additional opportunities to comment on the report in World Bank seminars to be held this spring.