Strategy for agricultural transformation in africa

 
A mid-term review (MTR) of the AgSS found that overall the Bank had made good 
progress in implementing the strategy.
While being proactive in supporting the demands of 
the Bank’s RMCs, the Bank has aimed to remain selective, focused, and innovative. More than
80% of the agriculture sector’s approvals between 2010 and 2012 were allocated to rural and 
value-chain development. The MTR further highlighted that the Bank was particularly 
successful in leveraging resources through partnerships, co-financing, and initiatives. The 
AgSS MTR identified the following lessons, which could be learned in guiding the Bank’s 
future interventions in the agriculture sector: (i) the need to develop large-scale privately 
owned and managed operations in low-income countries, similar to its interventions in middle-
income countries; (ii) the need to improve capacity building within the Bank to ensure effective 
implementation; (iii) the importance of enhancing strategic thinking with a repositioning of 
operations to focus on infrastructure development; (iv) the need to increase the Bank’s dialogue 
with Regional Member Countries (RMCs); (v) that the Bank should improve collaboration 
between projects; and (vi) that it should improve monitoring and evaluation of projects, which 
should include measuring outputs at several levels, including at the regional and country levels.
 
Mainstreaming gender through the Bank’s interventions in the agriculture sector was 
identified as a major shortfall in the AgSS mid-term review.
The MTR identified the need 
for better handling of gender issues in agriculture projects, beyond disaggregated indicators by 
gender. The MTR also identified the need to develop the relevant gender analyses and tailored 
gender interventions. The Bank faces challenges in mainstreaming gender in project design 
and assessing the gender impact of projects and programs. This is majorly due to insufficient 
sex disaggregated statistics, and gender-sensitive baseline and gender-specific information.