Most of the food that is produced, processed, transported, and sold in the Global South is handled by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). While SMEs play a substantial role in bringing foods to market, their success is hindered by several constraints, including a lack of financial and technical capacity to improve and grow their businesses. Women-led enterprises face additional constraints, as there is a large gender gap in access to business finance across many world regions, exacerbating the already challenging act of securing financing for a business in the agri-food sector. 

N3F is committed to financing 60 nutritious food SMEs across 15+ countries in SSA (Sub-Saharan Africa), aiming to reach between 7–10 million end consumers with safe, nutritious foods.  

Beyond the N3F, we aim to explore other opportunities for innovative financing to scale nutrition impact, i.e. outcome-based financing and incentive-based impact-linked finance.

Established in 2012 and convened by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), the SUN Business Network (SBN), is the private sector platform of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement and aims to support businesses to integrate and improve nutrition within the context of their country’s national nutrition priorities. The Network serves as a crucial link between the private sector, government, and other stakeholders. It mobilises businesses, especially small, and medium enterprises (SMEs), for collaborative efforts to boost private sector contributions to improved nutrition. Currently, SBN has 21 national networks across Africa and Asia, comprising 1,600 businesses voluntarily signed up as members. The development of national networks is demand-driven, which gives the SBN a ‘bottom-up’ focus and national ownership.

In the current 4-year strategy (2022 – 2025), SBN continues to reduce malnutrition in all its forms by mobilising the private sector in SUN countries to commit to and invest in improved business practices that contribute to national nutrition priorities. This will be achieved by bringing together the private sector, government, and relevant stakeholders to work with and support businesses, especially small and medium enterprises, to take joint and practical actions that shape sustainable local food systems and accelerate contributions to improved nutrition.

The programme focuses on improving access to, and demand for, healthier diets through workplaces (e.g., garment factories) or supply chains (e.g. tea estates, smallholder maize farmers). As co-convenor of the global Workforce Nutrition Alliance, GAIN brings together experts and thought leaders, provides employers with tools and resources, and curates data on best practices.

About this programme

GAIN’s Workforce Nutrition programme focuses on improving access to and demand for healthier diets using existing business structures as entry points (workplaces or supply chains). Recognising that most people spend one-third of their adult lives at work, and consume at least one daily meal at the workplace, underscores the important role employers and buyers in supply chains can play in improving workers’ diets. Ideally workforce nutrition is integrated in a broader approach to worker well-being featuring living wages, women's empowerment and the promotion of healthy lifestyles.

Healthy Diets for Tea Working Communities in Assam

Definition of environment at GAIN

In general, we aim to promote a sustainable food system which does not compromise the ability of our planet to provide nutrition for generations to come.
The current GAIN Strategy 2022 – 2027 puts environment at its core. It set out these goals:
“Engaging nature. We will design and implement our work to positively link nutrition to climate and the environment. We want to make GAIN the greenest nutrition organization both operationally and programmatically. This will make us a more responsible partner and help us accelerate advancements in nutrition outcomes”

Read about The Initiative on Climate Action and Nutrition (I-CAN)

What is the link to nutrition, food systems and policy pathways?

Nutrition and the environment are deeply interconnected. Climate change, for instance, has an adverse effect on the yields and nutritional quality of major staple crops, which raises the risk of food insecurity and malnutrition. Furthermore, food systems can have a damaging impact on the environment, contributing to 80% of deforestation and one-third of greenhouse gas emissions.
In general, nutrition and food have been undervalued in the discussion on managing climate change and biodiversity, just as the nutrition community has tended to ignore sustainability issues. This is changing, in particular the framework for food shifted markedly via the 2021 Food Systems Summit which places diets, environment, climate, livelihoods and rights together for the first time in global development thinking. We also saw tentative steps to open the door to more inclusion of food and nutrition at the climate COP27 in 2022.

Our approach: How do we act on this?

GAIN's Environment Strategy is built around three pillars:

1. Programmes
2. Advocacy
3. Operations

1. Programmatic interventions

Environmental considerations are incorporated into GAIN’s programmes at different levels, aiming to both ensure that all of GAIN’s work is sensitive to environmental considerations while also developing programmes which explicitly seek to address environment alongside nutrition and advance knowledge on how to do this. We consider three models for how environment is incorporated into GAIN’s programmes:

2. Policy and Advocacy

GAIN aims to raise awareness about and inspire action around the intrinsic link between food systems, nutrition, and the environment among policymakers and other decision makers.  While GAIN has predominantly focused on global initiatives so far it plans to expand its engagement to the national level through the NFP program. We aim to build partnerships with environment organizations and agreed an MOU with WWF in 2021.

One significant advocacy GAIN leads is the Initiative on Climate Action and Nutrition (I-CAN) launched at the climate COP27 with the Government of Egypt, FAO, WHO and SUN. I-CAN aims to catalyze, mobilize, connect and advocate for integrated climate and nutrition action. As part of this work GAIN will publish a report in October 2023 outlining the extent to which action is currently integrated across policy (such as National Climate Adaptation Plans and National Nutrition Plans), research and data and finance.

3. Operations

To address GAIN’s own environmental impacts, we plan to set a baseline and measure our progress towards reducing the footprint from our own operations. GAIN approved a travel policy in 2021 including a commitment to halve CO2 emissions/ FTE by 50% by 2025 compared with pre-COVID levels of travel and put in place carbon offsetting in place for work-related travel.
In each GAIN office, interested staff lead efforts to ‘green our offices’ to reduce energy and water use, reduce waste and increase awareness of environmental issues. and once a year we celebrate “Green Week at GAIN”.

Resources

These cross-cutting themes are often co-benefits of work that we do with the primary aim of improving nutrition, with food safety an obvious example and (food systems) resilience another. Two further prioritised cross-cutting themes—environment and gender—also have the potential to benefit from GAIN interventions, but they can also be seen as powerful contextual factors that could undo global and national progress in nutrition and food security. The last two prioritised cross-cutting themes cast a spotlight on population groups who are typically under-represented in programmatic work even though they carry a heavy burden of malnutrition: people living in extreme poverty, and the young.

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  Consolidate and generate knowledge

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  Develop and test food safety 

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  Generate evidence of intervention effectiveness

By highlighting these issues throughout our work, GAIN hopes to accelerate progress in the battle against malnutrition and to contribute to work on other sustainable development goals.