This is the sixth Annual Report on Results and Impact of IFAD Operations (ARRI) produced by the Office of Evaluation (OE). The ARRI report consolidates and synthesizes the results and impact of IFAD’s operations based on a cohort of project, country programme and corporate-level evaluations conducted in the previous year –in this case in 2007.

As in the past, the objective of the ARRI report is twofold: (i) to present a synthesis of performance based on a common methodology for evaluation; and (ii) to highlight key learning issues and development challenges that IFAD needs to address to enhance its development effectiveness. While the primary audience of the report includes IFAD Management and staff, and the Fund’s Evaluation Committee and Executive Board, it is also of importance to the wider development community because of the issues it raises for sustainable agriculture and rural development generally.

The present ARRI report follows the structure of the 2007 edition. Sections 2-4 synthesize the main evaluation findings from the project, country and corporate-level evaluations carried out in 2007. Section 5 presents an analysis of the consolidated evaluation data from all 85 projects evaluated since production of the first edition in 2003. Section 6 presents the report’s contribution to learning, which this year covers the themes of country context and project-level monitoring and evaluation (M&E), as agreed with the Executive Board in 2007. Conclusions and recommendations are contained in section 7.

The report also includes a specific section on two key learning themes: (i) the importance of analysing country context issues thoroughly in order to strengthen IFAD’s development effectiveness; and (ii) a reflection on the opportunities and challenges in enhancing the performance of project-level monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems.