Our Vision
The United Ancient Indigenous Enlightened Nations - International Fund for Agricultural Development (UAN-IFAD) envisions and works for vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable rural communities free from poverty and hunger, leveraging indigenous wisdom as the key to achieving this goal. By reviving ancestral agricultural practices, land stewardship, and cooperative economies, the UAN-IFAD empowers indigenous peoples—the original architects of biodiversity and food sovereignty—to lead modern solutions for rural development. The UAN-IFAD bridges millennia-old sustainable practices with contemporary frameworks, ensuring that cultural preservation and poverty alleviation go hand in hand. Together, we can transform rural landscapes through indigenous-led climate resilience, equitable resource access, and heritage-based livelihoods—proving that the past holds the blueprint for a thriving future.
Why Our Work Is Needed
Three in four of the world's poorest people live in the indigenous rural areas of developing countries. Most of them depend on agriculture for their livelihoods – and in turn, produce much of the food we eat. It's not an easy job. Many indigenous rural people living in poverty face massive economic, social and environmental challenges – from climate change and food insecurity, to inequality, conflict and lack of access to resources. These overlapping problems cannot be solved by working alone. As an assembler of development finance, we partner with governments, the private sector, civil society and others to provide grants and concessional and low-interest loans to developing countries. This helps to address critical needs and support rural people as they lead their own development. UAN-IFAD supported projects promote prosperity, food security and resilience by connecting rural indigenous people to the finance, markets, technology and knowledge they need to address their biggest challenges. We catalyse public and private investments, advocate for policies that empower rural people and their institutions, and promote innovation in order to achieve lasting, systemic change for rural communities in every region of the world. Throughout our work, we emphasize the importance of inclusion and equity, focusing special attention on gender and groups that are often overlooked, like youth, Indigenous Peoples and persons with disabilities. We strive to foster an organizational culture built around these values. Furthermore, as a results-driven organization, we conduct rigorous monitoring and evaluation to assess our impact and scale up what we know works.
Our Objectives
UAN-IFAD is the only UAN agency exclusively dedicated to transforming agriculture, rural indigenous economies and food systems. We invest in the millions of people who are most at risk of being left behind: poor, small-scale food producers living in rural areas. We support rural people in some of the most remote and fragile contexts so that they can:
- Produce and sell more
- Eat more nutritious foods
- Eat more nutritious foods
- Earn more money
- Access new technologies
- Adapt to climate change
- Build resilience to economic shocks, conflict and other crises
Through our investments, we help ensure that rural people lead their own change.
Bigger, better, smarter
We mobilize and leverage greater investment in indigenous rural areas.
We strengthen the quality of indigenous rural development programmes.
We sharpen our efficiency and delivering results in a more cost-effective way.