- 14/10/2025
Through the Nourishing Food Pathways programme, GAIN has collaborated with Hystra on a new study exploring how investments in nutritious food value chains can deliver both nutrition and environmental benefits in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. The research highlights opportunities for impact-oriented investors, specifically Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), to direct capital towards businesses that improve diets while advancing sustainable food systems.
The study prioritises six nutritious food value chains; fruits, vegetables, legumes, milk, poultry, and aquaculture, selected for their inherent nutritional value, potential to reduce environmental pressures and high investment potential. In each region, case studies of investable enterprise illustrate how targeted investments can expand access to affordable and diverse nutritious foods, reduce post-harvest losses, promote climate-friendly practices such as regenerative agriculture and circular resource use, and enhance productivity.
The report provides practical insights for DFIs and other impact-oriented investors who are committed to advancing SDG2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG13 (Climate Action). By making strategic investments in businesses operating in these value chains, investors can simultaneously reduce environmental impacts and expand access to nutritious, affordable foods in local markets, creating a virtuous cycle of sustainable growth and resilience.
- 22/07/2025
N3F’s 2024 Nutrition Impact: Expanding Access to Nutritious Foods Across Sub-Saharan Africa
The Nutritious Foods Financing Facility (N3F) released its first impact report, underscoring a strong selection of impactful investees enhancing nutrition across Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2023, the N3F portfolio collectively produced or facilitated access to over 647 million servings of nutritious food products, reaching an estimated 3 million end-consumers, the majority of whom are low- and middle-income households.
- 21/07/2025
Malnutrition in all its forms continues to be a major public health challenge worldwide, and progress on improving it has been very slow, with no country on track to meet global nutrition goals and the number of people affected by hunger or unable to afford a healthy diet rising in recent years.
- 20/12/2024
The SUN Business Network (SBN), co-convened by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Global
Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), operates within the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement’s multisectoral
framework to address malnutrition, through private sector engagement.
- 23/07/2024
This report demonstrates that investing in nutritious food value chains allows investors to achieve significant gender impact. The hope is that more funding will be unlocked for nutritious food value chains, particularly for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which critically lack access to financing in emerging markets.
- 18/04/2024
In 2023, Criterion Institute and UNICEF partnered to develop child lens investing: an emerging field that intentionally integrates considerations of child rights and wellbeing into investment processes. Understanding is growing of the opportunity that exists for increasing economic, social, and environmental impact by considering children when making investments.
- 08/06/2023
Malnutrition is a major public health problem, for which global development assistance current falls far short of needs. As such, it is important to consider non-traditional sources and mechanisms to increase the funding available to support nutrition, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where the burden is highest.
- 30/10/2020
Small- and medium-sized businesses play essential roles throughout the food systems of low- and middle-income countries, and supporting them to expand and improve their production can help strengthen domestic employment and economic growth and facilitate improved access to safe, nutritious, and affordable food.
- 29/10/2019
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are central to low- and middle-income country (LMIC) food systems and have the potential to increase local accessibility (availability and affordability) of nutritious and safe foods.
- 01/01/2018
This discussion paper is based on a review of relevant literature and interviews with investors and experts at the intersection of business and nutrition. The objectives of this paper are to assess what is needed to unlock greater commercial investment into nutritious food value chains, from nutrition to agribusiness to SME finance and blended finance.
