FAO.org

Online resource provides concise and up-to-date practical guidance to investment practitioners.  

Agriculture investment planning and management is a core public sector task in every country. It requires complex assessment to ensure scarce public resources are invested effectively. But many countries have limited capacity to do this on their own, and rely on international expertise. Until now, it was difficult to find solid, practical guidance in one place. But the Investment Learning Platform is changing that by providing concise, up-to-date guidance and learning resources on one site to help investment practitioners plan, design, implement and evaluate public investment in agriculture and rural development.

FAO has a unique breadth of investment expertise in agriculture and rural development, combining theoretical knowledge with extensive practical experience. Our investment specialists have worked with national partners and project staff to tailor the content to meet investment practitioners' needs.

Who the site is for

The ILP aims to provide concise and practical guidance to those who plan, design, implement or evaluate public investment in agriculture and rural development. This includes government staff and their national or international advisers, as well as partners in investment, such as representatives of producer organizations, think-tanks, research institutes, universities or financing institutions. 

How it works

Users are guided to the resources and information they need, either through the investment cycle phase – planning, design, implementation or evaluation – or specific themes and tasks. They can also browse key resources.

• Investment cycle phases — A summary and a full ILP note outline steps, tasks and key aspects to consider in each phase of the investment cycle, with links to relevant thematic notes and resources.
• Investment themes and tasks —ILP technical notes provide concise guidance on specific tasks to undertake during investment planning and management, as well as key themes, mostly cross-cutting, relevant to different investment cycle phases. The briefs highlight why the particular task or theme is important for agricultural investment, and direct users to other resources for more detailed or specific guidance. Each subpage features a short summary, a full technical note, an overview of selected key resources and related links, including one to a list of acronyms used on the ILP Web site.
• Key resources—Here users can find all documents, in alphabetical order, published by FAO and other partners that are referred to in the various cycle and thematic pages. There is also a search engine.

Keeping tools and resources relevant and up-to-date

Approaches change and new resources continue to be developed, which is why we will periodically update the ILP and add further notes as necessary.  

In selecting the tools and resources, we focused on the essentials, as identified by our investment specialists, rather than provide a comprehensive list.

We invite you to visit the Investment Learning Platform and share this resource with your networks.

We also welcome users' feedback and suggestions for how to improve and update the site.

Write to us at:  [email protected]