A Year of Delivery: Advancing Impact with the Zero Hunger Coalition

Beginning a new year offers a moment for clarity — about the global context we face, a recognition of what we have achieved together, and a clear sense of the direction for what must come next.

The context is demanding. Hunger and malnutrition remain unacceptably high. Climate shocks are intensifying. Fiscal space is tightening across many countries. We are also entering a more uncertain global environment, where continuity and predictability in international cooperation can no longer be taken for granted. In this context, business as usual is no longer an option.

What the Zero Hunger Coalition has already achieved

Since its creation in 2021, the Zero Hunger Coalition has positioned itself as a platform focused on action. Its purpose has not been to multiply commitments, but to change how countries move from ambition to implementation.

Through in-depth country analyses, the Coalition has helped governments move from broad diagnostics to clear prioritisation. This work has identified the interventions with the greatest potential to reduce hunger and malnutrition, strengthen resilience, enhance income, and improve diet quality. It links expected impact, real costs, and financing capacity at the systemic level.

These analyses have consistently highlighted a shared challenge: progress is constrained less by the absence of policies than by the gap between ambition and delivery. Weak sequencing, fragmented financing, siloed approaches and chronic underinvestment in essential public goods, including data systems, extension services, storage, logistics, and food safety,  continue to slow food systems transformation.

The Coalition has also played a key role in advancing South–South learning. Exchanges among countries facing similar constraints have enabled practical peer-to-peer learning on costing national pathways, aligning process mechanisms, understanding commons challenges, progress, success and pitfall, and offering honest conversations. These exchanges have shown that solutions travel faster when they are grounded in comparable realities.

In parallel, the Coalition has helped broaden the conversation on financing food systems, including dialogue on innovative approaches such as debt conversion mechanisms to create fiscal space for food security, nutrition, and resilience — particularly in fragile and highly indebted contexts.

Together, these efforts have laid a solid operational foundation. The task now is to scale.

Priorities for the year ahead

The year ahead demands that we do things differently.

First, domestic resource mobilisation must take centre stage. National budgets, development banks, sovereign funds, local authorities, and fiscal instruments must become core pillars of food systems financing. However, the challenge is not only to mobilise more resources, but to allocate them more strategically toward resilient, inclusive, and high-impact investments.

Second, the private sector must be engaged more deliberately. This is not about transferring responsibility for food security or nutrition to markets. It is about creating credible and predictable frameworks that channel private investment toward high-impact segments, local processing, storage, logistics, nutritious value chains, agri-food innovation, and jobs for youth and women — in ways that align with the public interest.

Third, the role of the state must continue to evolve. In a more fragmented global economy, governments increasingly act as strategists and market shapers, responsible for coherence, risk management, and resilience. This requires stronger coordination across ministries and more structured engagement with national economic actors.

Finally, foresight must become integral to food systems decision-making. Climate volatility, market disruption, demographic change, and fiscal risk are reshaping the operating environment. Anticipating these risks, stress-testing pathways, and identifying no-regret investments are now essential for credible planning and financing.

Anchoring action in CAADP

For African countries, this agenda aligns directly with the implementation phase of the CAADP 2026–2035, which promotes a decisive shift from commitment-setting to delivery at the continental level. CAADP provides the common and integrated framework through which food systems priorities can be coherent with national development plans, climate commitments, and budget processes.

For the Zero Hunger Coalition, CAADP is not a parallel track. It is the backbone that enables evidence from the Hesat2030 country roadmaps, South–South learning, and financing dialogues to be translated into nationally owned, costed, and accountable action.

A Coalition focused on impact

The Zero Hunger Coalition exists to support country action. Our commitment for the year ahead is straightforward: to keep the Coalition focused on what matters most — helping countries convert their commitments into measurable progress toward ending hunger, sustainably and equitably.

Ending hunger is a matter of leadership, coherence, and shared responsibility. In a rapidly changing world, our ability to act collectively, invest wisely, and learn quickly will determine whether food systems become sources of resilience and opportunity — or continued vulnerability.

This year, our responsibility is to demonstrate that this approach delivers results.