The International Fund for Agricultural Development intends to raise between $600 million and $700 million of its 12th replenishment in private placements to meet its fundraising goal of $3.5 billion by 2024 and help alleviate increasing world hunger.
Last month, it issued its first two bonds totaling $150 million, which makes it the first United Nations fund, and the only U.N. body and specialized agency other than the World Bank Group, to enter capital markets in this way.
According to Natalia Toschi, IFAD’s head of funding, the steps were necessary because official development assistance to agriculture has “remained rather flat” at 6%, even as world hunger is rising. The latest figures from the U.N. show that as many as 828 million people could not regularly consume enough food to fuel a regular active, healthy life in 2021, while 71 million people have been pushed into poverty since the war in Ukraine began.