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SDGs integration and acceleration portfolios

In the face of challenges such as rapid population growth, economic downturns, extreme climates and changing consumption patterns, our food systems are under extreme pressure. Alternative approaches and innovative solutions are needed to transform global agrifood systems and accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The FAO SDGs integration and acceleration portfolios respond to this need.

These are programmes designed to identify and test solutions to address specific challenges in achieving the SDGs. They provide support and source funding for initiatives that foster innovative solutions and the cultivation of a solutions-oriented mindset. They aim to create an innovative space for experimentation, where ideas can be tested and refined, and where stakeholders can collaborate and learn from each other.

The SDGs acceleration and integration portfolios are scalable, resourced and replicable, ensuring they can be integrated into the policies, practices and actions of countries and local communities around the world.

 

SDG Agrifood Accelerator Programme

FAO SDG Agrifood Accelerator Programme

FAO has partnered with the adelphi-hosted SEED initiative to develop an SDG Agrifood Accelerator Programme, providing coaching to agrifood systems start-ups to help develop their business while accelerating the SDGs.

The Programme supports select small and medium sized enterprises from developing countries, who are pioneering solutions designed to transform agrifood systems, while improving the lives of the most vulnerable people in their communities. These enterprises receive a toolkit of supports as well as one-on-one tailored mentoring to scale up their business, assistance with the development of investment and finance plans to strengthen their market development, diversification and innovation trajectories and a methodology to track their social and environmental impact and contribution to the SDGs.  The Programme also facilities these enterprises to expand their network, trough peer-learning workshops and networking events.

The Programme demonstrates how, with the right support, local innovators can reach their business targets while significantly contributing to accelerating SDG implementation in their local context.

 
Read more about the eleven SMEs who joined the 2023 Programme below:


AfriLeap produces and supplies hydroponically grown quality hop cones. It empowers local smallholder farmers and saves land and water as hydroponics need less land to grow plants than traditional farming methods.

 


Amaati empowers rural women through farming indigenous Fonio grains. Fonio has low water requirements and can withstand adverse weather conditions. The social enterprise works with over 2000 farmers and dries, de-husks, packages, stores and markets Fonio cereal products for household consumption. 

 


FAM Organic delivers fresh produce and a new urban farming concept, the urbanutrigarden, to its eco-farming partners and customers. Urbanutrigarden is an integrated store concept to promote organic urban farming, healthy lifestyles and a sustainable environment to urban households. 

 


Farmers Fresh Zone improves food traceability, supporting rural farmers in good agricultural practices. By collecting and selling local produce through a shortened value chain, the enterprise ensures transparency over how food is produced and sold. The produce is marketed through multiple channels, including a website, stores, stalls, and a subscription service. 

 


Gorilla Conservation Coffee pay a premium price to help coffee farmers living next door to the gorillas around the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda. This business keeps farmers from resorting to damaging the forest through activities like poaching and removing resources like wood, and in turn, helps protect the gorillas and their habitat. 

 


Kalahari Honey operates a beekeeping business to mitigate human and wildlife conflict, feed more families, create jobs and build sustainable communities. They train and supply farmers with beehives to use as ‘active’ fences to prevent elephants from destroying their farms. The farmers then sell bee products back to Kalahari, who market these commodities globally. 



ListenField applies scientific principles and climate data to analyze all relevant factors of rice production. The enterprise provides precision farming solutions that can cut field operation costs and provide a detailed outlook for yield prediction building on AI-Assisted Multispectral Vision and Crop Modeling Technology. 

 



Mooto Cashew provides hybrid cashew tree seedlings with an early maturity period and very high yield to farmers in the Western province of Zambia, which is highly affected by deforestation caused by charcoal burning. The reforested area enhances the region’s ecosystem and provides a viable livelihood alternative to its communities. 

 


Rahsa Nusantara showcases Indonesian heritage beverages that benefit people and the planet. Engaging a network of organic female farmers in a circular production and packaging process, they are producing healthy ready-to-drink products promoting a healthy and environmental-friendly lifestyle. 

 



Wuchi Wami packages, brands, markets and distributes local raw and organic honey for health-conscious clients. The honey is sourced from the wild miombo forests in the Mwinilunga Northwestern province of Zambia. It is processed through its registered cooperative which sees 2,500 farmers participating in beekeeping in an out-growers scheme model. 

 

 

Yoddoi sells organic single-origin Arabica coffee grown in the Doi Chaang area of northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai province. It promotes organic farming amongst Akha hill tribe, a small group of coffee growers, and creates a farmers' satisfaction price to generate sustainable income for farmers.


Related Links
Read more about the SDG Agrifood Accelerator Programme
HASTEN: Harnessing SDG-based Agrifood System Transformation through the Empowerment of the Next-Generation of Agrifood Leadership in Africa
HASTEN

HASTEN aims to foster and generate transformational changes in people, processes and markets by strengthening capacities among the next generation of leaders in sustainable agrifood systems transformations in Africa.

Operating in Lesotho, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone,  it encourages a move from incremental to transformative change by nurturing transdisciplinary systems thinking; developing capacities to analyse SDG interlinkages and identify synergies and trade-offs to make multiple impacts; promoting formal changes and new mindsets and competencies for the creation of effective, inclusive and accountable institutions; and enhancing the private sector’s contribution to the achievement of the SDGs through innovative business practices.

This is being achieved by:

  • Empowering youth to lead solutions: HASTEN focuses on increasing the competencies of young agrifood systems professionals in transdisciplinary systems thinking, through training, analysis and exchange visits. 
  • Enhancing peer learning for process innovation: This is promoted through national workshops in participating countries and the development of nationally focused policy briefs on priority thematic issues, with the aim of inspiring  the change in processes necessary for agrifood system transformation.
  • Scaling-up eco-inclusive, social agripreneurship: The project includes business incubation initiatives to upgrade  the support ecosystem for agrifood SMEs, with a focus on inclusive, climate-smart, resilient, and digitalized value chains and promoting sustainable business practices among young entrepreneurs.

Driven by partnerships with national governments, international investors, academia, research institutes, and youth entrepreneurs, HASTEN aims to enhance agrifood systems' governance and functionality, ultimately promoting efficient and equitable national food systems in the participating countries.

 

Read more about the projects activities