FAO investment centre annual review: a look back at 2024

Investing in agrifood systems helps countries achieve better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life. In its latest Annual Review, published today, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation’s Investment Centre highlights some of its investment milestones and achievements with partners and over 120 member countries in 2024 and priorities for the coming years.

For starters, the Centre helped design 51 partner-approved projects in 36 countries worth $7.3 billion in new public investment. And it supported ongoing investment projects, totalling over $49.5 billion in investment, to ensure end-to-end quality and lasting results.

 In addition, the Centre contributed to 48 agricultural strategies, 33 sector studies, 21 policy studies and 5 policy dialogues in 92 countries. The Centre also provided technical assistance to improve the quality of lending to private investment in 50 countries.

The work carried out by the Centre’s teams helps connect small-scale farmers and rural entrepreneurs to financing and markets, build resilience in communities, protect vital ecosystems and biodiversity, and much more.In the publication’s foreword, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu wrote that “without increased investment, we risk failing” and urged the global community to turn the enormous challenges the world faces today “into opportunities.”

“To do this, we need to leverage science, innovation, enabling policies and investment to produce more with less: more foods – both in quantity and diversity – with a smaller footprint,” he said.  

Trusted business model drives expanding pool of partners for investment solutions

The Investment Centre, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2024, is seen as a trusted partner for tailored investment and finance solutions.

Strong and evolving partnerships with countries and financiers are at the heart of its thriving business model, combining technical expertise, financing, innovation, global outreach and in-depth country knowledge.

This edition of the Annual Review features many examples of the fruits of these partnerships.In 2024, for example, the Centre teamed up with the World Bank on a joint study examining the challenges smallholder coffee producers in Guatemala and Honduras face in preparing for the European Union’s regulation on deforestation-free agrifood products.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development, a longtime partner, approved funding for the second phase of a project designed by the Centre to enhance livelihoods, community empowerment and access to essential services among Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups in India’s Odisha region.

The revitalized partnership between FAO and the African Development Bank resulted in several new Centre-designed, Bank-approved investment projects, including a $46.2 million grant to address South Sudan’s persistent fragility by boosting agricultural productivity, building climate resilience and promoting household incomes.

With the European Union and Member countries, FAO has identified public and private investment opportunities along strategic corridors connecting regional and global trade markets and within key global agrifood value chains in Africa, including cashew, coffee, rice and cocoa.

FAO and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development launched a joint technical assistance package to support private investment to identify and implement roadmaps for climate-smart agrifood systems.

And new Green Climate Fund projects are helping countries attract much-needed climate finance, including Mexico, which aims to reduce climate vulnerability among rural communities in its Balsas watershed.

Work on blended finance to unlock sustainable private investment – critical for mobilizing the trillions of dollars needed to sustainably transform agrifood systems – advanced in 2024, with activities planned with newer partners like the European Investment Bank and Italy’s Cassa Depositi e Prestiti.

The Centre also continued to support countries and regional and subregional initiatives through the Hand-in-Hand Initiative – an excellent example of the One FAO spirit in action. Twenty-nine countries and five regional consortia presented investment proposals at the 2024 Investment Forum.

“These are investments, not donations, with countries in the driver’s seat,” the Director-General emphasized.

Catalyzing a growing network to seize huge opportunities

Transforming the world’s agrifood systems to be more sustainable, more resilient and more efficient is as urgent as ever. If the challenges are enormous, the opportunities are also huge, Qu said. “Without risk, there can be no change.”

FAO and its growing network of partners are committed to creating an enabling environment to crowd in more public, private and blended financing to accelerate that transformation.

By working across FAO and with financiers and academic and research institutions, the Centre will continue to integrate game-changing tools, technologies, data and innovations into its investment and finance solutions.

Ensuring that every person on the planet has access to good food at all times, today and tomorrow, motivates the Centre and its partners to do more and better around agrifood investment, driving real change for a better future.