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The World Bank has estimated that 1.1 billion people worldwide live in extreme poverty, some 75% in rural areas. Even with trends towards urbanisation, two thirds of the poor will still live in rural areas by 2015. The Department for International Development (DFID) manages the UK's contribution to achieving the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals to halve poverty by 2015 and has set its own targets to contribute to this goal. If it is to meet its targets, its aid will need to help make significant reductions in rural poverty.
The livelihoods of the rural poor are often exposed to risks such as poor harvests, and those in remote areas find it difficult to access infrastructure and markets. Service providers may incur higher costs per head to reach rural areas, so the rural poor are often marginalised and excluded from development gains.
A range of DFID assistance benefits the rural poor to some degree, including bilateral country programmes, contributions to multilateral institutions, DFID-commissioned research programmes and its work to influence global polices in areas such as trade reform and climate change. On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General,[1] we examined how DFID is tackling rural poverty in developing countries. This report covers three themes:
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RURAL POOR. DFID needs to tackle rural poverty if it is to meet its own targets but it does not assess how much of its assistance benefits the rural poor. Current funding disadvantages the rural poor both in bilateral assistance (where the rural poor receive less direct funding per head than the non-rural poor), and in its contributions to multilateral institutions which do not target the rural poor or which have limited capacity.
DESIGNING DFID COUNTRY PROGRAMMES. DFID is increasing its support for government budgets. But developing country governments are not always efficient at reaching the rural poor or fair in their expenditure allocations. Greater use of well designed projects, and working through civil society organisations, may be needed in such cases.
MONITORING AND EVALUATING EFFECTIVENESS. Despite difficulties in data collection, DFID's current monitoring of the value for money of aid to rural areas needs tightening. Current management practices do not give sufficient insight into the real needs of the rural poor.
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