Sharing Donor Experiences for SDG2: Interview with new member GAFSP

Deputy Program Manager, The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP)

Carlotta Cramer/GDPRD: Thank you for speaking with us on day two of the Annual General Assembly (AGA). Can you sum up your reactions to the event so far?

Natasha Hayward: For me, it's been a really useful opportunity on a number of levels. First of all, the theme and focus around innovative financing approaches in the rural development space are important, but also for us as GAFSP (The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program) with the view to SDG2 and addressing food security, hunger, poverty. It's great to have core players in the space in the room, to really discuss the next push to 2030 and what range of innovative financing approaches are needed. What is the role of donors in this space for effectively and efficiently targeting what are, these days, more limited resources? And of course, how to leverage private sector participation in this space? It’s an opportunity to hear from different people and have some candid sharing of experiences, which for us was useful to engage with, and also to listen and get to speak with different partners.

Carlotta: GAFSP is the newest member of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development – welcome! Can you say a few words about what the role of a platform like this is in the food systems financing agenda?

Natasha: One of the interesting takeaways from this morning's discussion was around the need to have valuable forums for coming together for coordination and for sharing of data and experience. there was recognition that there are really useful existing lessons, experiences, instruments out there. We need to have a better understanding of the range of those instruments, and how to use them better. So a forum like the Global Donor Platform serves exactly that purpose for sharing that experience — both the challenges to learn from and the successes to do more of, and also the related data. We've had that opportunity for specific initiatives presented to us around the financing flows, which is very informative in knowing where the needs are.

For GAFSP, a lot of this has served to confirm some of our experiences and analysis, and it reinforces our own call to action for the donors to come to a platform like this and amplify our experience and messages. So yes, it's a good opportunity to be an active participant in a relevant space with both donor partners and other initiatives with whom we hope to coordinate and collaborate more.