Successful IFAD-supported project helps influence national policy in The Gambia

Yai Ceesay is learning to write her name as a student in Sibanor village 

The Gambia is taking steady steps towards prosperity by scaling up proven land and water management practices across the country and developing national policies to back these efforts.
Nema, the local Mandinka word for prosperity, is also the name of the IFAD-supported National Agricultural Land and Water Management Development Project currently being implemented in The Gambia. This initiative, which is building on the achievements made over 30 years in partnership with smallholder farmers and the government, is scaling up the successes of the earlier IFAD-supported Participatory Integrated Watershed Management Project (PIWAMP). The two projects are part of a 20-year programme promoting community-driven agricultural land and water development.

"The achievements of those farmers that participated in PIWAMP, especially the women, convinced the Government of The Gambia that investing in agriculture on a wide scale is a path to prosperity – Nema - for the country and its citizens," said Moses Abukari, IFAD's country programme manager for The Gambia.

IFAD ranks PIWAMP fouth in fiduciary rating

Beneficiaries and staff in action

Participatory Integrated Watershed Management Project (PIWAMP), a demand-driven project co-funded by the Government of The Gambia (GOTG), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the African Development Bank (ADB), has been ranked fourth in IFAD’s fiduciary rating 2012.

The design of PIWAMP was built on the successful experience of the concluded Lowland Agricultural Development Project (LADEP), its achievements, effects, impacts, as well as the strengths and shortcomings.