The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has announced an $11 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that will launch the organization’s next phase of agricultural policy monitoring, analysis, and reforms in sub-Saharan Africa.

Over the next five years, Phase 3 of FAO’s Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) program will work to identify priority areas for increased investment and establish more transparent markets, inclusive rural transformation, and more nutritious commercial food production in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda. In addition, MAFAP will provide technical support to help prioritize resource allocation, evaluate the effects of new policies, and provide governance advice.

With tighter budgets in the wake of COVID-19 and the impact of the war in Ukraine, “[g]lobal agricultural markets are becoming increasingly disrupted, leading to price spikes in food, energy, and increasing fertilizer prices, that not only hurt farmers and producers, but also consumers and families, because of the lack of capacity to access food,” said FAO chief economist Máximo Torero Cullen. “[Action is needed in the] short term to respond to these shocks, and medium to long term to achieve the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals.”

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