UN Food Systems Coordination Hub / Joint SDG Fund | Source | Report |
Between 2024 and 2025, the Joint SDG Fund's Food Systems Transformation Window channeled its Seed Funding Track — roughly USD 250,000 per programme over 12 months — into 12 countries (Cambodia, Costa Rica, Egypt, El Salvador, Jordan, Kenya, Rwanda, Samoa, Serbia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Vietnam), demonstrating that modest, time-bound investment can unlock policy reform and strengthen institutional coordination before larger-scale financing becomes viable.
The report frames fragmented policy landscapes and unclear institutional mandates as the main barriers to food systems transformation, which seed funding is designed to resolve by clarifying mandates, costing national priorities, and generating evidence. Country results include Cambodia's digitalized monitoring and evaluation framework and financing strategy, Tanzania's National Food Systems Planning and Budgeting Tool (2025-2030) with gender-responsive budgeting, Uganda's integration of 80% of identified priorities into its forthcoming National Development Plan, Jordan's value chain strategies embedded in its National Food Security Action Plan, and El Salvador's Healthy Eating Law. Rwanda, Jordan, and Kenya have already transitioned from Seed funding to the Fund's High Impact Track, which mobilizes larger, systemic investment in six additional countries (Bolivia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, Tajikistan, and Timor-Leste). The report positions policy coherence and institutional readiness — not large loans — as the binding constraint on food systems transformation.
