Director-General QU Dongyu

WORLD FOOD FORUM 2024 60th Anniversary of FAO Investment Centre Opening Remarks

by Dr QU Dongyu, FAO Director-General

15/10/2024

Excellences, 

Ladies and gentlemen, 

This year, 2024, marks the 60th anniversary of the FAO Investment Centre - 60 years young as we like to say! 

This year provides an opportunity to reflect on our six decades of investment support, from past achievements to the future of agrifood investments.

FAO signed its first cooperative agreement with the World Bank in 1964. 

With world-class technical expertise in agrifood systems, FAO became a trusted partner, bringing together governments, International Financial Institutions (IFIs), investors, experts,farmers, and entrepreneurs.

The Investment Centre soon expanded its partnerships, working with banks from Africa, Asia, to the Inter-American Bank, IFAD, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Union, the Green Climate Fund, the Islamic Development Bank, the Caribbean Development Bank, and many many more—a trend that continues to this day. 

We look forward to working closely with newer partners like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the European Investment Bank and the New Development Bank, and others.

The FAO Investment Centre’s unique business model has endured because it works. 

Over 60 years, we have helped design more than 2,400 IFI-financed investment projects in 157 countries, totalling over USD 257 billion in public investment, when adjusted for inflation.

The impact on people’s lives and livelihoods is equally impressive. 

In India, a World Bank-financed rural growth programme we supported helped the local government reach almost a quarter of a million under-served rural households, boosting average incomes by 35 percent. 

Women-led producer organizations benefitted from greater financial inclusion and better market access, resulting in enhanced gender equity.

In Benin, an IFAD-funded project trained 210 agri-entrepreneurs, who supported 350 productive alliances to develop business plans using FAO’s RuralInvest, leading to USD 7 million in investments in small and medium enterprises.

In response to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, FAO and the EBRD launched a technical assistance package in 2022 to improve food security in six Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries, which rely heavily on imports. 

The focus is on policies, market transparency, import efficiency, and sustainable local production.

The Investment Centre’s business model is powerful. We calculate that, on average, for every USD 1 spent from the FAO Regular Programme budget USD 655 in new high-quality investment is supported for our Members.

Good design is only part of the equation. For this reason, I established the World Food Forum as a win-win solution for recipients and donors.

Annually, the FAO Investment Centre provides technical assistance and supervision to ongoing public investment projects to ensure that these investments generate quality results for people and the planet. This is the comprehensive advantage of FAO, based on our overall technical expertise to assist Members and to leverage the impact of all the related policies.

In 2023, that portfolio was valued at around USD 47 billion - an extraordinary amount of investment! This is beyond all our expectations!

Over the years, the FAO Investment Centre has pioneered and scaled innovative approaches like participatory design, farmer field schools, nutrition-sensitive and climate-resilient agriculture, and better water management. For this reason, we have included the Rome Water Dialogue for the first time to the World Food Forum programme

The FAO Investment Centre continues to evolve, focusing on areas such as sustainable value chain development, decarbonization, digital agriculture, and innovative financing.

The past few years, the FAO Investment Centre has gone through a reform to better help countries achieve quality impact at scale, in line with FAO’s Four Betters: better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life -  leaving no one behind.

With a growing multidisciplinary team working in 120 countries and with access to FAO’s vast technical, data, analytical, and policy expertise, the Centre is where countries and investors can come for investment and finance solutions.

The Centre works with financing partners and puts countries’ needs first - from strategic designing and policy support to impactful public, private, and blended finance, and de-risking investments. The objective is long-term, large impact, rather than short-term results.

Since the FAO Hand-in-Hand initiative was launched, the Centre has supported the countries and their teams to prepare their priority investment plans. 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The challenges ahead are enormous, but the opportunities are also huge. 

Without risk, there can be no change.

In 2023, more than 730 million people faced hunger, and over 2.3 billion were moderately or severely food insecure. 

Transforming the global agrifood systems is the only way to tackle these challenges. 

This transformation requires trillions of dollars in investment by 2030. If you don’t invest today, you will face an even bigger risk tomorrow.

Without this transformation, we risk falling short of the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement targets, leading to greater food insecurity, environmental degradation and social instability.

At FAO, we believe the quality and quantity of today’s public and private investments will shape tomorrow’s scenario.

As we celebrate the FAO Investment Centre’s 60 years of investment support, and prepare for FAO’s 80th anniversary next year, I call on each of you to continue working together to invest in a future without hunger and poverty that leaves no one behind.

Let’s continue to work together, to ensure that small holder farmers can access the financing they need because they are the ones who are producing our food!

Thank you.