Information on the process of designing the Suriname Rural and Interior Development Project.
1. In May 2009, the Government of Suriname, Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries (LVV) requested IFAD´s support, in view of the implementation of the Government Agricultural Sector Plan (ASP), to assist the rural and interior development efforts of the country and to prepare a new rural development project. It was specifically indicated that the project should focus on the challenges limiting food security and development in rural and interior areas.
2. In response to this request, an IFAD concept note mission was undertaken during the period August 31th – September 4th, 2009. At the end of the mission the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries (LVV) signed an Aide Memoir endorsing the content of the concept note and indicating Suriname’s continued interest in collaboration with IFAD.
3. IFAD´s Operational and Strategy Committee (OSC) evaluated the concept note in November 2009, and gave the approval for a Project Formulation Mission to go to Suriname from April 15th to May 4th, 2010 to prepare the detailed design of the project. The mission was carried out in country by a team of professionals under the guidance of the IFAD Country programme Manager. Again an Aide Memoire was signed with LVV this time by the Minister, endorsing the content of the project design and indicating Suriname’s continued interest in development assistance from IFAD.
4. In June 2010, the IFAD Quality Enhancement Panel (QE) came together in Rome and carefully reviewed all design documents, making several suggestions as to improve the project design. The panel made recommendations with regard to: i) the country relevance, commitment and partnerships, ii) targeting, gender and participation, iii) best practices and lessons learned within the context of IFADs strategic framework, iv) institutional aspects and implementation arrangements, and v) risks and sustainability. In order to address the issues identified by this QE Panel, and in order to conclude the design process, IFAD in coordination with LVV fielded from January 17th – February 2nd, 2011 a Final Design Mission[1].
5. The priority areas of focus of the new project are consistent with the approach and emphasis of existing government (LVV) policy, which includes food security, food safety, improvement of the extension services, and increasing income and employment as part of the poverty alleviation strategy for Suriname.
6. The Final Design team benefitted greatly from meetings with a cross-section of public and non-governmental institutions as well as field trips. Building on the meetings from the previous Formulation Mission further discussions were held with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries (LVV), the Ministry of Regional Development, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Education. The field trips provided several opportunities to listen to the project’s beneficiary groups and to observe first hand their organizational processes, production systems and access to markets, and income earning activities. Meetings with IDB, the Dutch Embassy, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, Fruit and Vegetable exporters, the Association of Indigenous Village Leaders, the Chamber of Commerce, several Financial Institutions, and multiple NGOs engaged in agricultural and rural development activities in Suriname provided the Final Design Team with information on experiences and lessons learnt from past rural development projects in Suriname and the wider Caribbean context, and valuable input to fine tune intervention strategies and identify complementarities and synergies with other ongoing national and internationally funded programmes.
7. The project design report will directly reflect analysis and synthesis of technical discussions and documents shared with the team, with a particular effort to build on ongoing activities, fill gaps and establish sustainable rural development facilitation systems. The objectives, component outcomes and activities reflect an appreciation of the wide range of issues characterizing rural development generally, and even more importantly, rural and interior development across different ecological conditions and in different socioeconomic and cultural contexts. The intervention strategy recognizes the need for prioritization and stepwise strategies to achieve early results but always ensuring sustainability in stable food and livelihood systems, even as change, such as increased income earning opportunities are promoted in the project area.
8. In keeping with IFAD’s mandate for reducing poverty and promoting rural development, the goals and policies of the Government of Suriname and lessons learned from other development initiatives, the project´s goal is to contribute to the reduction of food insecurity, poverty and vulnerability of poor rural and interior communities. The project´s development objective is to promote human development and income generating activities in poor rural and interior communities.
9. Suriname is generally divided into three ecological regions – Young coastal plain, Savannah belt, and the Guyana shield (hinterland). About 90% of the total population of some 490,000 inhabitants of Suriname lives along the coastal plain. A sharp distinction is generally made between rural areas (usually means rural coastal) and interior areas (away from the coast and much less accessible). The inhabitants of the selected rural coastal and interior areas (almost all vulnerable and poor) are seen as the primary stakeholders of the project. The rural coastal stakeholders are mainly small (part-time) semi-commercial farmers producing rice, coconuts, vegetables, milk, and are fisher folk, who regularly produce both for food security and the market. The interior stakeholders are mainly subsistence level farmers (producing mainly root crops and some fruits) and fisher folk, hunters and gatherers, some of whom are producing for the market.
10. There are clear ethnic distinctions corresponding to the poverty in Suriname’s geographic areas. In the interior areas it is mainly the Amerindian native peoples (about 3% of the population) and the Maroons (10% of the population). In the rural coastal areas the poor comprise a large cross section of the Surinamese peoples, including poor Javanese, Hindustani, Creole households as well as Maroons and Amerindians who have recently moved to coastal areas because of social (war) and environmental dislocation.
11. The program intervention area consists of selected districts from the Rural Coastal and Rural Interior districts: Coronie, Saramacca, Para and Commewijne (all four are Rural Coastal), and Marowijne (communities around Moengo and the Cottica river), Brokopondo and Sipaliwini (particularly the communities located at the Upper Suriname river) (all three are Rural Interior). The rationale for focus on these stakeholders within rural coastal and interior areas, is that they include the poorest and most vulnerable in Suriname – without sufficient access to potable water, sanitation facilities, generally at best a primary school education, income earnings below the national poverty line, and highly vulnerable to natural disasters and economic shocks.
12. The Project will apply a differentiated intervention strategy according to: (i) the ecological zones and the specific problems and opportunities in these zones, and (ii) socio-economic and cultural factors. This differentiation will allow the project to address the needs and problems of each specific group (men, women, youth by ethnic group) while taking into account their specific socio-economic, gender, cultural context, and the feasibility of organization strengthening, productive and income generating activities from the moment they start interacting with the project.
13. The lessons learned, indicate that all Project beneficiaries will need human and social capacity building, either to increase their knowledge and skills basis to improve agricultural production, become employable, to manage their own business (human capital), or to develop and construct the necessary strategic alliances and networks (social capital) in order to succeed as a formal or informal group, or business entity.
14. The outcomes of the project: (i) increased human and social capital in poor rural and interior communities, (ii) improved capacity in poor rural and interior communities to establish and manage sustainable farming systems, enterprises and marketing of their products, (iii) facilitate the capacity to become employable, and (iv) skills and capacities of service providers to facilitate access of project beneficiaries to development services on a sustainable basis strengthened, reflect two dimensions of the project. These are human and social capital development on the one hand, and rural production, enterprise development, and marketing on the other. In the project these two dimensions are fully integrated conceptually and in practice. At the same time, the different specialized topic areas are recognized and thus each dimension has its own outputs and indicators.
15. The human and social capital development dimension of the general objective has the following lines of actions: (i) Strengthening of Community Based Organizations (farmers, women´s, youth, etc.); (ii) Strengthening of national or district level Producers Associations and/or Cooperatives (in order for them to provide services to the target group); (iii) Basic life-skills development training for out-of-school youth (includes reproductive health, where accepted); (iv) Support for skills and vocational training, coaching, job placement or access to the Project´s Rural and Interior Investment Fund for starting a new micro enterprise; (v) Basic literacy and numeracy skills development (linked to microenterprise development); (vi) strengthening of insider (farmer-based) and outsider (NGO or GO-based) service providers, and (vii) enable community development, youth sport and cultural activities, affirmative actions for vulnerable groups, and empowerment through the social window of the Rural Social Investment Fund (RIIF).
16. Thus, the Human and Social Capital Building (HSCB) component addresses organizational strengthening, empowerment, participation, community ownership, skills development and decision making processes that would greatly increase the likelihoods that the needs of beneficiaries and stakeholders are responded to and that the response very much is developed with them as active participants in the process.
17. The main purpose of the Rural Production and Marketing Development component (RPMD) is to contribute to the well-being of poor small farmers in selected areas of Suriname by facilitating an enabling environment that will make it possible to improve their farming systems and therefore their income or food security systems in a sustainable manner. It´s main lines of action are to: (i) increase the Ministry of Agriculture´s capacity to provide extension, with enhanced methodologies and provide technical assistance and training in areas of beneficiaries needs in a sustainable way, (ii) support to primary agricultural and livestock production, (iii) support the marketing of rural products, (iv) support to rural enterprise development and management, and (v) to make available funds to finance or co-finance small local rural development projects and to stimulate creativity and the capacity to innovate among project stakeholders.
18. Under this component the central intervention will a Technical Advisory Service support team to strengthen the provision of services in areas such as: (a) support to primary agricultural production, (b) support the marketing of rural products and food safety, and (c) support to rural enterprise development and managerial capacities.
19. The project design considers also the possibility of some institutional strengthening activities for micro-finance institutions, particularly those that could work in the interior and rural areas in order to make existing credit facilities more accessible to the project beneficiaries. An important aspect of the project is the Rural and Interior Investment Fund (RIIF), for which SuriTrust has been identified as a potential Fund manager. The Rural and Interior Development Fund would be a demand driven financial facility of the Rural and Interior Development Project that provides grants to sustainable projects of the beneficiary population. The grants would finance part of the investments (there would be a contribution of beneficiaries according to their socio-economic situation and type of initiative). The RIIF general eligibility criteria corresponds to the targeting criteria of the Project and would have the following basic principles: a) participatory approaches in the preparation and implementation of proposals to ensure empowerment and capacity building; b) sustainability of the sub-project (financially, socially and environmentally); c) transparency and efficiency in the allocation of funds (open calls to the beneficiary population eliciting the eligibility criteria and partnerships with existing sources of financing); d) focus on the most vulnerable groups to ensure equity in the access to financing (the ranking criteria of projects would secure that projects of hinterland population, women and youth would be the grant priority). The RIIF would have two windows: 1) social window, for financing social infrastructure or affirmative actions for vulnerable groups in excess of up to USD 20 000; and 2) a productive and marketing window, for financing up to USD 10 000 in fixed assets and other investments required for implementing sustainable business proposals.
20. Several national institutional points will work closely during project implementation. Overall project implementation will be through a Project Implementation Unit (PIU) working under the guidance of primarily the Ministry of Agriculture (LVV). In discussions with both the Ministry of Regional Development and the Ministry of Agriculture it was indicated to the Final Design Mission, that since the change in Government it is just a matter of time until the agricultural directorate in the Ministry of Regional Development will be transferred into the Ministry of Agriculture and will be responsible for interior agricultural development. This is considered a very positive change from the standpoint of coordination of agricultural activities under one Ministry. From the project administration standpoint it is also positive and as it reduces direct contact from being with two Ministries to now one Ministry (Agriculture).
21. Whereas MoA (LVV) will be the project´s main implementing institution, there will also be close collaboration with several other Ministries, including the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Regional Development (responsible for governing urban, rural and hinterland areas and the decentralization process in Suriname), the Ministry of Labour, Technology and Environment, and the Ministry of Education. In addition to public sector collaboration it is intended that several services required under the project will be contracted directly by the Project Implementation Unit (PIU), and also that Memoranda of Understanding or contract will be signed with several of the potential service providers. Service Providers can be private businesses, individual consultants, government institutions or non-governmental organisations. In some cases community based organizations that are sufficiently developed from an institutional and management capacity standpoint can play an important role in delivering project activities under the concept of “direct implementation”.
22. The PIU provides the management and overall guidance to the project, and from an administrative overall coordination standpoint is staffed by a Project coordinator, an accountant, a procurement specialist, a monitoring and evaluation specialist, and a gender and youth specialist, etc. From a component standpoint it includes a Human and Social Development Specialist, an Agriculture Extension Specialist, an Enterprise Development Specialist, a Marketing Development Specialist, a Food Technician, and 3 Site Regional Extension Coordinators (2 Coastal, 1 Interior/Savannah).
23. In order to increase the efficiency of project implementation and sustainability of the Ministry’s of Agriculture capacity to deliver services to the project target group, the project will liaise directly with seven of the Ministry´s Resort Offices (located in Totness, Tamanredjo, Moengo, Lelydorp, Groningen, Brokopondo, Atjonie) and it´s human resources. The project will contribute to improving, equipping and providing transport facilities at these locations in order to improve their capacity as “Learning and knowledge training centers”. The project will invest in the training of the Ministry of Agricultural Extension workers, of whom after training a number between 15 and 20 will be selected on the competitive basis and seconded by the Ministry to the project. In these Resort Offices, the project will also locate seven Human and Social Capital Building Officers in order to ensure that project services from both components will be delivered in an integral manner.
24. A Results Based Management system will be implemented from the start of the project. This approach will provide both the Project manager and stakeholders with data, information and knowledge that enable them to effectively assess and contribute to the management of the project, ensuring an efficient use of resources and timely problem solving. This will lead to the Project achieving its objectives and targets within the foreseen timeframe. In addition to this system of results based management a Monitoring and Evaluation system of the project will generate and share knowledge from Project experiences that can lead to internal learning and improvement of processes, further innovation, improved management and input to policy dialogue at a national level and within the context of CARICOM sub-region. Exchange visits and knowledge sharing with other IFAD projects in the sub-region will be strongly promoted as part of the IFAD sub-regional strategy.
25. The total cost of the project, including contingencies is estimated at USD 8.0 million. In accordance with discussions with the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, the project costs would be financed through an IFAD loan of USD 3.0 million, a loan for the amount of USD 3.4 million from the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), a Government contribution of USD 1.347,000.00 (including tax, local salaries and operating costs), and a contribution in-kind or cash by the beneficiaries of USD 253,000.00. The implementation period was set at six years.
26. Co-financing possibilities were also discussed both with national authorities and international institutional partners, and the Mission made contact with the GEF Team located in the Ministry of Labour, Technology and Environment in order to explore the possibilities of a Grant to strengthen the environmental aspects of the project.
27. There are several agencies currently implementing projects in the rural and interior areas of Suriname. Perhaps most importantly in this regard is the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) which has projects The proposed project has strong complementarities with the work of several international institutions collaborating with the Government of Suriname on its rural area development initiatives. IDB, EU, UNDP, FAO all have projects that contribute either directly or indirectly to rural area and interior development. For example, IDB has a project entitled “Sustainable Livelihood Program for Saramaka (Maroon) Women” which is promoting eco tourism at the village level, focused mainly on the establishment of an a eco-tourism cultural village rest stop. There is a second IDB interior project, “Strengthening Supply-chain Activities in the Eco-tourism Industry in Suriname” which promotes skills training for employment in the hospitality sector as well as entrepreneurial and small business development. IDB has three projects in the pipeline related to forestry, environmental conservation and the integration of small holders in the value chain. In order to minimize duplication, maximize synergies and promote sustainability, areas of collaboration, at the very least information sharing, will be explored during implementation.
28. The project faces the following risks: (a) the limited capacity of the weakest beneficiaries and their current social exclusion in their communities resulting in them being by passed by project activities despite the design being characterized by affirmative actions to prevent this. Therefore, particular care will be needed during project implementation to ensure that the training of project staff and service providers is successful in mitigating this threat; (b) the absorptive capacity by communities with regard to production technologies and enterprise management is so slow that market opportunities are lost due to limited supply volumes and delivery reliability. Realistic phasing of training, application of technology and commitments to marketing points will have to be ensured while recognising that these activities have to be balanced to ensure that markets are there when production is in place to be delivered; (c) at the district and community levels, outreach of service providers is at best poor and a reflection of the shortcomings at the national level. The project strategy and institutional delivery mechanisms are designed to make improvements in services emanating from all of these levels.
29. The project will be directly supervised by IFAD, through periodic supervision missions in accordance with its new supervision policy.
The mission was integrated by: (i) Ms. Jaana Keitaanranta- Country Programme Manager, IFAD; (ii) Ms. Ingrid Schreuel- Social/Human Capital Development and Lead consultant; (iii) Dr. Deep Ford- Institutional arrangements for implementation; (iii) Dr. Raul Moreno- Production, farm models, and natural resource management and environment; (iv) Ms. Maria Sisto – Cost and financing and Rural and Interior Investment Fund; (v) Mr. Kelvin Craig – Marketing, (vi) Mr. Martin Weekes – Rural Financial Institutions, (vii) Dr. Maureen Silos- Identification of project participants and their socioeconomic context, (viii) Ms. Amanda Gittens- Project Operational Manual (home-based), and (ix) Ms. Barbara Massler – Monitoring and evaluation (home based).
