Livelihoods Connect lessons, experience and views on sustainable livelihoods

Better Livelihoods for Poor People - DFID Workshop: South Africa 9-11 May 2000
(John Barrett: DFID South Africa) 5 September 2000

	The 1998 DFID Country Strategy Paper for South Africa identifies rural livelihoods as one of three priorities for UK support. A recent DFID workshop held with South African partners helped to: review progress against the strategy; identify areas for future joint work; and seek ways to improve the partnership. The 101 participants came together from Government departments, NGOs, DFID-supported projects and DFID-SA offices.
	The policy context There was a clear consensus that the central principles of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach represent good development practice and resonate closely with current South African policies and approaches to rural development and poverty reduction.
	DFID's current programme in South Africa DFID is presently supporting 30 projects in agriculture, forestry, land reform, coastal management, the water sector and small enterprise development (totalling UK funding of R90 million / year). Key issues that might affect future UK support for rural development in South Africa were discussed, including: balancing support for policy development versus capacity building for implementation; decentralisation and the future role of Local Government; promoting partnerships between the private sector, NGOs and civil society; safety and security; co-operative governance; donor co-ordination; the need for a better understanding of poverty and poverty processes; indicators for monitoring livelihoods; regionalisation and globalisation.
	Future Work Areas for future DFID-SA support for sustainable livelihoods prioritised by the workshop included: identification and understanding of target groups of poor people; institutional reform; capacity building for implementation of the good policies which now exist; development of best practice for operationalising the principles underlying the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach; and improved co-ordination of development efforts, particularly among donors.
	Improving Partnerships Looking at partnerships, the workshop concluded that DFID is generally easy to work with, in comparison with some other donor agencies, but that there remains significant room for improvement in the quality of the partnership. Specific recommendations emerged which DFID-SA undertook to take forward in the coming year: greater involvement of DFID's partners. DFID will consider establishing reference groups, on a task-oriented basis, to engage with DFID-SA in oversight of the projects which we support, comprising representative South African stakeholders; better information sharing. DFID will develop and implement a communication strategy regarding our policies and programme in support of sustainable livelihoods, targeted at South African stakeholders; support for partners and consultants. DFID will seek to provide training to partners, consultants, and contractors to better understand the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach; simplified project management procedures: DFID will seek to make its project management systems less complicated and burdensome for our South African partners. Strong demand was identified for DFID to organise training workshops in relation to DFID project cycle management procedures and also for greater harmonisation, if not standardisation, of donor procedures. DFID undertook to pursue this, where possible and appropriate, in consultation with other major donors in South Africa, in particular with the European Commission, which was represented at the workshop.
	The full report of the workshop is available online: Word For further information please contact me by email at: jc-barrett@dfid.gov.uk (John Barrett)