
FAO launches 2022 Annual Report on Private Sector Engagement
In a world facing a global cost-of-living crisis and deepening disruptions to food supplies caused by conflicts, climate change and the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the private sector has an essential role to play in ensuring that families can still put food on their tables.
In light of this, FAO’s newly launched Private Sector Engagement Annual Report 2022 details the Organization’s approach to private sector engagement and the actions that FAO has taken to strengthen food security and nutrition in a time of global crisis. FAO also responded to these challenges by helping to scale up investments from the private sector with the potential of bringing benefits to farmers and smallholders across the globe.
Following FAO’s Strategy for Private Sector Engagement 2021–2025, this report charts a year dedicated to ensuring that the Organization’s partnerships with the private sector are more targeted and transparent than ever before.
To this end, FAO worked hand-in-hand with private sector actors to accelerate agrifood systems transformation, including establishing a Women’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Accelerator Mentorship Programme. This programme paired fifty women entrepreneurs across Africa with a panel of experts drawn from successful women in business and helped provide them with access to the knowledge and tools they needed to grow their enterprises and adapt to the demands of an ever-changing marketplace.
But perhaps the most important lesson learned from FAO’s outreach to the private sector over the past year was this: if you can’t measure something, you can’t improve it. That’s why the Organization worked hard to enhance the CONNECT Portal with a Customer Relationship Management system, which will allow FAO to better understand the impact of each private sector engagement. Work has also begun on a mapping tool that will allow employees to more deliberately target future private sector partnerships.
Equipped with these new tools, FAO is dedicated to strengthening food security and nutrition across the world through meaningful and measurable partnerships with the private sector, from agricultural collectives to agrobusiness.
FAO’s Private Sector Engagement Report 2022 is now available online in English. Translated versions in Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian and Chinese are in progress.