Kidal Integrated Rural Development Program

The region of Kidal in northern Mali has suffered considerable civil strife since the early 1990s, when economic development organizations were forced to withdraw. In 2006, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) began a review of the conditions in which a new phase of development efforts could be mounted. Virginia Tech received a $25,000 technical assistance award to participate in an IFAD mission to design a program strategy and calendar for intervention, taking into account:

• the pastoral specificity of the Kidal region
• the institutional context of decentralization
• the lessons learned from various former and ongoing projects and programs in the area and in Mali, and
• opportunities for partnership with other donors in the fight against rural poverty.

An IFAD team of international experts, including SANREM CRSP Associate Program Director Keith M. Moore, was responsible for the analysis of conflicts between the target groups of the program and formulation of measures to prevent and manage these conflicts around the natural resources and the investments of the program. The team prepared the Kidal Regional Integrated Rural Development Program (PIDRK) Formulation Report for IFAD outlining technical components required for successful intervention; methods of their implementation, monitoring and evaluation; an environmental assessment; and terms of reference for complementary baseline studies. In particular, Moore provided a working paper on the predominant dimensions of resource conflict in the Region of Kidal, identifying opportunities and conditions for consensus building and convergence of interests in resource management, and suggesting innovative options for integrating conflict management with productivity and income increasing activities.

Details are on the IFAD website, http://operations.ifad.org/web/ifad/operations/country/project/tags/mali/1356/project%20overview