Our Approach

The Global Agriculture & Food Security Program (GAFSP) is a demand-led and recipient-owned global partnership and a cost-effective and flexible multilateral financing mechanism dedicated to fighting hunger, malnutrition and poverty in developing countries. In line with Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2), GAFSP supports resilient and sustainable agriculture that benefits and empowers poor and vulnerable smallholder farmers, particularly women and youth.

GAFSP pools development assistance resources and uses a common framework to selectively allocate them to where they are most needed, effective and catalytic, in line with country priorities and private sector opportunities. 

GAFSP is collectively governed by agricultural development stakeholders. Smallholder farmers’ organizations and NGOs participate in decision-making alongside donors and recipients and contributes with their local knowledge and expertise. This unique setup allows GAFSP to align donors and harmonize their approaches behind a common framework, and to foster mutual accountability, information exchange and learning within and beyond GAFSP.

GAFSP projects are led by governments, private sector, and civil society organizations (CSOs). To ensure quality, GAFSP has partnered with the world’s leading development institutions to enable access to their experience, capacity and quality, and to assist recipients in preparing, implementing and coordinating relevant and successful projects. GAFSP recipients determine which expert institution to work with.

GAFSP offers a range of public and private investment tools including grants, concessional loans, blended finance, technical assistance and advisory services. With a combination of public and private investments, GAFSP projects deliver strategic support to agricultural systems that expand the horizon of agricultural financing, increasing its reach and impact.

GAFSP helps farmers to achieve substantial income gains, to be food-secure, and ultimately to be “market-ready” and share in the gains of local growth and development by investing in a wide range of opportunities across five key components: i) raising agricultural productivity; ii) linking farmers to markets; iii) improving non-farm rural livelihoods; iv) reducing risk and vulnerability; and v) providing technical assistance, institution building, and capacity development.

Today, GAFSP stands as a proven, effective mechanism, already working to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), channeling funds to stakeholders in differentiated ways, adapted to their needs: grants to countries through their governments via the Public Sector Window; financing packages to private sector enterprises and agribusinesses through the Private Sector Window; and grants to producer organizations with smallholder farmer membership through the Missing Middle Initiative (MMI). 

Read the Framework Document 

Read the Governance Document 

Read the Program Evaluation