WEBINAR: Innovative Financing Through Food Systems to Improve Diets

1 July 2021. Innovative Financing Through Food Systems to Improve Diets: One attempt to encourage engagement from the private sector is the Nutritious Food Financing Facility (N3F). The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) initiated N3F to catalyze private sector innovation in nutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa.

While nutrition initiatives in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) have traditionally been supported with public funding (via donors and/or local governments), a major potential financial resource remains untapped: private-sector investment.

• The Nutritious Food Financing Facility (N3F) is one attempt to change this. The N3F was initiated by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) to catalyze private sector innovation in nutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS) is interested in identifying and supporting appropriate mechanisms through which businesses, specifically SMEs working in the nutritious food space, can better access financing to increase the availability and affordability of safe and nutritious foods and scale their operations.
• RFS and USAID Advancing Nutrition (USAID AN), drawing upon the expertise of USAID AN Consortium Partners GAIN and the University of California at Davis (UCD), are collaborating on a review of the N3F to understand how this financing mechanism can enable SMEs in LMIC to increase their access to financing for nutrition.

This webinar provided a platform to introduce the N3F mechanism and share the outcomes of the program review. 

• Songbae Lee (moderator), Agriculture Finance Team Lead, USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS)
• Stella Nordhagen, PhD, Senior Technical Specialist, N3F Programme, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)
• Stephen Vosti, PhD, Associate Adjunct Professor, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, University of California Davis (UCD)