African Livelihoods Partnership (ALPs) - Executive Summary

"Africa Rising", says the cover story of The Economist of 3

rd
Dec 2011. The question is
whether a rising Africa will take Africans out of the clutches of poverty caused by low
agricultural productivity, little or no vocational skills, and massive financial exclusion.
There is no surety, however that the double digit growth rate will make a difference in the
lives of the poor, for growth is not always inclusive. To ensure that growth benefits the
poor more than just through trickle-down, efforts have to be made on the demand side,
building capacity of and organising the poor.

The African Livelihoods Partnership (ALPs) began as an ambitious idea, originated by
the BASIX Social Enterprise Group founded and headed by Vijay Mahajan and was
presented initially to their long time partner, the Swiss Agency for Development and
Cooperation (SDC), to promote the concept of South-South co-operation in
development. Such an ambitious project needs the experience of other participants in
the field of development with deep knowledge of Africa and its developmental
challenges. BASIX thus reached out to CIDR in France, their associate PAMIGA network
in Africa, MIFED in Cameroon, K-Rep in Kenya, several organisations in Tanzania, and
GAPI in Mozambique, and its own affiliates The Livelihood School (TLS) in India and
Livelihood BASIX Inc (LBI, a non-profit incorporated in the USA) to work together to
evolve a strategy to achieve the goal of supporting livelihoods for the poor, to ensure
more inclusive growth in Africa.

The overall goal of ALPs is to enhance livelihoods of the poor in a select number of
African countries in a sustainable, scalable and innovative manner, based on the
practical experience of BASIX and its strategic partners. The scope of ALPs can be
defined along the following terms: (i) Segmental (ii) Thematic and (iii) Geographical

In terms of vulnerable segments of the population, ALPs plans to work with:
smallholder farmers including pastoralists and fishermen, as needed;
women as smallholders, micro-entrepreneurs and homemakers; and
youth aspiring but jobless, seeking employment.

ALPs believes that it can best make a difference in the lives of the target segments
smallholders, women and youth by catalysing transformational changes in the following
areas:
Within Financial Services, helping smallholders, women, agroprises and youth get
access to savings, payments, insurance and credit (SWAY-SPIC). For smallholders,
the focus will be on crop and livestock insurance and value chain finance. For
women, the focus would be to help them save, mitigate financial risks through health
and life insurance and access credit both for income generating micro-enterprise as
also for improving quality of life such as loans for home lighting systems or for water
and sanitation. For youth, the focus would be on savings and on micro-equity or
participatory finance for start up enterprises.
Within Agriculture and Rural Development, smallholder productivity enhancement
and linking them to agri value chains (SPEL-VAC). Smallholder farmers are currently
stuck in a vicious cycle of low output and low productivity, little disposable income,
and thus low ability to invest in increasing output or productivity. The focus of ALPs
will be increasing the output and productivity of smallholders, mitigating their risks
and helping them participate in value chains of commodities they produce.
Within Human Resource Development, given the demographics, the focus has to be
on young men and women. ALPs would focus on promoting youth entrepreneurship
and self-employment through agro-enterprises and franchises after vocational
education and training (YES-AFVET).
Geographically, ALPs plans to work in each of the three regions:

Western-Central: Cameroon and then Burkina Faso.
Eastern: Tanzania and then Ethiopia or Rwanda.
Southern: Mozambique and Malawi.

In the first three years, ALPs will be a BASIX project and by the third year it will become
institutionalised as a legal entity registered in an African country with a majority of
African institutions on its Board. The ALPs guidance structure would comprise an
Advisory Board of nine members, comprising BASIX, PAMIGA, CIDR, TLS, LBI, MIFED,
GAPI, KREP, and a Tanzanian partner to be identified. There would be a mechanism
for six-monthly consultation and feedback meetings with SDC, Berne.

ALPs will have an Executive Committee of three members one each from BASIX,
PAMIGA, and the CEO/COO of ALPs. Along with three independents, they will constitute
a Task Implementers and Staff Selection ((TISS) Committee. This committee will
approve projects and the budgets for work to be done by any of the nine members or
their affiliated organisations.

There will be three country-wise Advisory Boards with expert members, one each for
inclusive financial systems, agriculture and value chains, and youth entrepreneurship
and self-employment. These committees will have 5-7 experts each and they would
meet twice a year to review the work of ALPs and give advice on how to make it more
effective.

ALPs implementation strategy will leverage the strength of its Strategic Partners to act
as or identify others as Field Innovation Testing Partners. These could be financial or
promotional institutions working with low income households in target countries;
Networks of Rural Banks or MFIs; Actors in Agricultural Value Chains public or private
or cooperatives; Providers of vocational or entrepreneurial or self-employment training.

The primary responsibility of designing the programmes of ALPs will be that of BASIX,
who will use the wide experience of PAMIGA and the African strategic partners to
identify gaps in the developmental efforts related to the three themes in each country.
Best practices would be identified to fill these gaps. ALPs will use the store house of
knowledge and experience in the development arena built across South Asia, Europe
and Africa over many years at the macro, meso and micro levels both at country and
institution levels. The primary institution for this purpose would be a BASIX promoted
institution, The Livelihood School, based in India, which has already been invited by the
Ford Foundation to seed similar institutions in South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique, and
Uganda.

Selected best practices will be tried out in the local context through carefully selected
Field Innovation Testing (FIT) Partners, who will be local institutions, with the help of
experts sourced from institutions worldwide. African knowledge partners such as
universities/specialised higher education or research institutions; networks of
practitioners in various professions; development consulting, policy analysis and
advocacy organisations would accompany the ALPs interventions. They would
measure the impact in an objective way and share the lessons. Those field innovations
which find good local acceptance and have a positive impact will then be taken up for
scaling up and mainstreaming through a key institutional partner. ALPs would
disseminate lessons to policymakers, in the countries of intervention, then more widely
in Africa, as well as India and the North through the aid agency channels as well as the
wider development fraternity. Thus the learning would be two way and the lessons of
work in Africa would be systematically captured and fed back.

The major outcomes are expected to be: (1) Financial institutions achieve an increased
depth of outreach to target segments - smallholders, women, youth and breadth by
offering a wider range of financial services, in a sustainable and responsible manner. (2)
Incomes of smallholder farmers, male and female, are increased and see less variation.
(3) Young men and women set up enterprises in agriculture and growing economic
sectors and while at least 10% become entrepreneurs and all others become self-
employed after vocational training. (4) Leaders of relevant institutions in the three
thematic areas adopt ALPs offerings to transform themselves into effective
developmental institutions, evidenced by them adopting more pro-poor, pro-women and
pro-youth policies, processes and products, and practice good governance and achieve
sustainability. (5) ALPs would be institutionalised, that is established as a legal entity in
one of the African countries and have its own Board. (6) ALPs becomes operational and
sustainable beyond SDC support. (7) ALPs sets up an investment vehicle the African
Livelihood Investment Fund (ALIF) for developmental enterprises to contribute equity,
debt and guarantees to value chain and service enterprises.

The financial resources to be made available by SDC through BASIX for the project over
the full six year period (2013-2019) are CHF 7 million out of a total of CHF 10 million.
Supplemental funding will be attempted from the first year itself. It is envisaged that SDC
funding will go down from 95% in the first year to 53% by the third year of the total ALPs
budget and by the end of the sixth year to just 4.6%. The rest is proposed to be
mobilised from other institutions such as the Ford Foundation, The MasterCard
Foundation, UNCDF, FAO, IFAD, the Indian development aid agency and the host
country governments.

The ALPs strategy has both internal and external risks. Internal risks are that the
partnerships with local institutions may not work well despite best efforts and delivery
may be slow leading to dissatisfaction among programme partners and target groups.
Externally, there are political risks that are inherent in countries that are in zones where
even if they are politically stable, there are regional instabilities. Also, acceptance of
three thematic foci as the major instruments for alleviation of poverty may not be readily
acceptable as the countries decide their own priorities. The strategy depends on
obtaining financial resources from other donors and public and private institutions which
may not be readily forthcoming. These risks notwithstanding, the promoters of ALPs are
confident that it has a reasonable chance of success and making an unique contribution
to Africas development on am inclusive and sustainable basis.

For further details, please contact:

1. Mr Vijay Mahajan vijaymahajan@basixindia.com
2. Ms Renee Chao-Beroff renee.chaoberoff@pamiga.org
3. Mr Sanjay Behuria behuria.sanjay@gmail.com