In Tehene, a remote community near Gurué in central Mozambique, high costs and difficult market access mean families rarely eat animal-source foods such as frozen fish or chicken. To help close this gap, entrepreneur Inocêncio Calado founded Alto Licungo, a cold chain distribution business supported by GAIN’s Improving the Consumption of Animal Source Foods project. Inspired by his late father, Inocêncio is helping transport perishable foods safely across long distances so rural communities can access nutritious foods more regularly.
According to the 2026 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, an estimated 935 million people in sub-Saharan Africa cannot afford a healthy diet. This stark reality underscores one of the region's greatest nutrition challenges: ensuring that nutritious foods are not only available, but also affordable for the people who need them most.
Addressing this challenge requires strong agrifood businesses capable of producing, processing and distributing nutritious foods at scale. This is precisely why the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) launched the Nutritious Foods Financing Facility (N3F).
What if a traditional Indonesian food could simultaneously improve soil health, increase farmer incomes, reduce dependence on imported commodities, and provide nutritious meals for schoolchildren?
In Aceh, the GAIN Jack Bean Tempeh Initiative is demonstrating exactly that. The project is pioneering a model that connects regenerative agriculture, local food processing, and school meal procurement into a single value chain that benefits farmers, enterprises, students, and the environment.
‘How might AI affect jobs in the food system?’ It was an intriguing question that came up in a recent office conversation — and one that is directly relevant to GAIN’s work that supports equitable and high-quality employment in food systems.
The rise of generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI) in recent years has led to excitement about the potential for higher productivity and new possibilities for what humans, helped by machines, can do – but also to anxiety about job loss, displacement, and inequitable outcomes for workers.
GAIN and Indonesia’s Ministry of Fisheries have launched National Small Fish Restocking Guidelines to support sustainable fisheries, improved nutrition, and stronger local livelihoods. Based on scientific research and field evidence, the guidelines promote ecosystem-based approaches that can significantly increase small fish populations and support long-term restoration of Indonesia’s inland fisheries.
Something significant is happening in food fortification. Quietly, and across more countries than most people realize, the years following passage of a milestone resolution on food fortification at the World Health Assembly have delivered a meaningful acceleration in the scale, quality, and political visibility of large-scale food fortification programs worldwide.
India’s agricultural transformation is widely recognised as one of the most consequential development stories of the twentieth century. From chronic food shortages in the decades following independence to self-sufficiency in staple cereals like rice wheat and millets, India’s investments in irrigation, research, and price support fundamentally reshaped food availability. Public procurement and subsidised public distribution systems ensured that calories reached even the most vulnerable. And this culminated in the institutionalisation of food security through the National Food Security Act.
In the current global context of prolonged global conflicts, increasing severity of climate change and ever rising inflation, the need to make our food systems, resilient has never been more urgent than now.
Resilient food systems feed and nourish people, create jobs, protect livelihoods and withstand shocks such as climate change, conflict, rising prices and supply disruptions. And the backbone of what makes food systems truly resilient are the Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). They are small individually, but together they form the everyday engine of our food systems.
In Ethiopia, the growing Textile industry is powered by the youth, typically aged 18 to 35 years, more than 85 percent of whom are women. Yet, behind the machines lies a hidden challenge: malnutrition. Evidence reveals that poor diet on the job is costing countries up to 20% in lost productivity due to malnutrition1 and this is further impacted by food inflation.
Food is the foundation of life. It nourishes our bodies, connects communities, and reflects culture and tradition. Yet what we eat must be safe to fulfil its purpose of sustaining health and well-being. Food safety is the set of practices and conditions used to handle, prepare, store, and distribute food in a way that prevents contamination and reduces the risk of foodborne illness. In simple terms, it means making sure food is safe to eat at every stage from production to consumption.
