Rural Finance Project (RFP) THE GAMBIA
Rural Finance Project of International Fund forAgricultural Development (IFAD) and Government of the Gambia (GOTG) strives to create an enabling environment to ensure that institutions, policies and programs of the sector are strengthened for the delivery of needed micro finance services.
Rural Finance Project Implementation
Project Area: The six–year Rural Finance Project (RFP) which became effective on 06 April 2008, IFAD LOAN NO. 698GM & GRANT NO. 869GM is the successor of the Rural Finance and Community Initiatives Project (RFCIP-14 July 1999 – 31 December 2006). The Rural Finance Project (RFP) is carried out in the entire territory of the Gambia.
Target Group: The Project continues to benefit the economically active rural poor in the Gambia, including food insecure households with special attention to women and other vulnerable categories in local society such as rural youth and minorities.
Goal: To create an enabling Micro Finance Environment for rural poverty reduction. Finance: The Rural Finance Project is comprised of a Loan Component of SDR4, 150,000 (four million one hundred and fifty thousand special drawing right) and a Grant in the amount of SDR 280,000 for the purpose of financing the Project.
The total Project cost including duties, taxes and contingencies is estimated at USD 8.596million over two cycles of three years per cycle. IFAD will finance 74.7% of total Project Costs, beneficiaries about 4.4% and GOTG will contribute about 10.9% of total Project Costs.
Purposes: The purposes of Rural Finance Project are:
(I) to foster self-sustaining rural Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) such as VISACAs and NBFIs.
(ii) to ensure that MFIs have consolidated access to qualified support.
(iii) to forge partnership with other projects including those with grant resources for socio-economic and infrastructural development, and
(iv) to effectively use loan proceeds.
Focus and Approach: Rural Finance Project (RFP) facilitates access by rural men and women, their groups and their communities, to the financial services needed to invest in productive activities, increase disposable incomes, and invest in the social and economic infrastructure that can help reduce rural poverty, through self-targeting. A proactive targeting mechanism operates to ensure that the poorest groups also have access to the supported financial services.
Sustainability: The project will only support those interventions that can expand outreach to the rural poor and enhance sustainability.
Components: Rural Finance Project consist of the following components:
(A) Institutional Strengthening of Micro Finance Institutions (MFI’s):The main objective of this component is to train management committee members, VISACAs NGOs and NBFIs on a demand basis.
(B) Institutional Strengthening of Supporting Institutions Technical Services Providers (TSPs). This component focuses on the following: Enhance capabilities of the Micro Finance Department of the Central Bank of the Gambia Enhance the capabilities of Micro Finance Promotion Centre (MFPC) and Technical Service Providers (TSPs). More information on these components and the related sub-components are detailed in the “components” section of the website.
(C) Implementation of the Project by an autonomous Project Support Unit (PSU) headed by a Project Coordinator and backstopping of the PSU on Micro Finance by an External TA (Technical Assistant).
Project Supervision: The Rural Finance Project (RFP) is directly supervised by IFAD. IFAD is committed to conducting at least two missions per year. In addition to supervision, missions often participate in fine tuning the microfinance policy in The Gambia, a process in which IFAD has been strongly involved.
Direct supervision will allow IFAD to foster close linkages between the project and a network of regional and international Micro Finance Institutions and thereby facilitate its exit strategy. It will also permit the mobilisation of specialised expertise for the reinforcement of in-country capacities related to microfinance development.
The supervision missions focuses on physical implementation, management performance, impact assessment and financial control.
Dr. Alasan .M. Bah Project Coordinator Email: coordinator@ruralfinanceproject-ifadgotg-moa.org
