Putting nutrition on top of the agenda of impact investors
Ensuring adequate nutrition and food quality is one of today’s global challenges, particularly in low and middle-income countries. Despite its critical importance for health and economic development, nutrition is rarely taken into account by the agricultural impact investing community. This is largely due to limited awareness of the specificities of nutrition-related investments, and a lack of widely adopted investment frameworks and practical tools to guide investors.
As nutrition is a new priority of the SSNUP programme, SSNUP’s knowledge manager ADA organised a workshop on: ‘Nutrition Investments – Frameworks and Practical Tools for Impact Investors’. The objective was to help place nutrition more firmly on the agenda of impact investors and to demonstrate that nutrition can be a viable and impactful investment theme.
During the webinar, impact investors, technical experts and donors explored existing frameworks, tools, and financing facilities to inspire impact investors who have not yet worked on nutrition.
The workshop focused on three concrete examples:
The Access To Nutrition initiative presented its Guide for Investors in Nutrition Sensitive Investing to help direct capital towards meaningful nutrition outcomes;
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition introduced the new NutrInvest tool that helps impact investors screen and assess nutrition-focused investments in low- and middle-income countries
The Nutritious Foods Financing Facility and the Good Food Innovation Fund demonstrated that nutrition can be established as a viable and investable theme, providing strong precedents for future investment initiatives.