Mimica: EU aid's nutrition strategy to focus on LDCs, partnerships

After a month in office, how does the new European Commission led by President Jean-Claude Juncker plan to combat global food insecurity and malnutrition? With the implementation of the 2014 action plan approved by the previous administration now in progress, expect more action in least-developed countries and those “that are in most need” of agricultural, food and nutrition assistance. The recently appointed European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development Neven Mimica sat down with Devex for an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the recent Second International Conference on Nutrition in Rome, Italy. Continuing to redirect financial and programming actions to LDCs and reducing the number of strategic sectors will be the pillars of the new Commission’s nutrition strategy. Mimica explained that some 60 countries have identified agriculture, nutrition and food security as the “main sector in need,” adding that the new Commission will continue to encourage partner countries to identify priorities and problems. In this respect, partnerships will be a key element in the EU’s strategy to address global hunger and malnutrition in the coming years. “The multipartnership, multistakeholder approach is what is needed because we can’t pretend that we are capable, we know and we can manage to do everything alone in terms of financing [and] managing the projects,” Mimica said. These partnerships usually include official development agencies from EU member states, U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations, but the commissioner wants to include other stakeholders as well. “We have to depart from the traditional concept of official development assistance as the only input we can give to developing countries,” Mimica explained. Here’s where international financial institutions have a crucial role to play. The Commission sees the sector as a partner “in co-financing or in blending facilities” to offer concessional loans and increase leverage. “Our input is there to prolong the grace period, reduce the interest rate, or to really make these loans as concessional as possible,” Mimica said. “These are loans where, without our contribution, there would be no financial engagement for the developing countries. No projects, no infrastructure, no food production would be financed without that.” While of course lenders will profit from the transactions, the ultimate beneficiaries will be low-income countries that otherwise would not have access to those loans. "We would really like to continue this kind of engagement into blending facilities, not in order to pour money into financial institutions and to increase their profits [but] to contribute to the concessionality of the loans … that otherwise wouldn't be given out to these countries,” the commissioner noted. As for the private sector, Mimica said the Commission wants to engage it as an implementer and investor, but asserted he does not support large corporations participating in nutrition projects where their participation could do more harm than good, citing land grabs as an example. Rather, the focus should be on boosting the access to market for smallholder farmers, as well as small and medium-sized agricultural enterprises. “This is where we would like to direct much more financing and much more effort: to combine private initiatives of the small farmers with European programs and projects,” the commissioner said. The Commission’s nutrition action plan aims to scale up projects at country level, which some observers have warned — and the commissioner himself admitted — entails certain risks. "I am not confident that developing countries take the best or the most efficient and most effective outcomes [from] all the programs or projects that we have in the field,” he said. The Commission's Agenda for Change policy, Mimica noted, has brought some notable progress in this sense, but there is much room for improvement on managing resources as well as monitoring and evaluation, and the commissioner urged recipient nations to “upgrade their capacity to absorb the development cooperation [funds].” Read more international development news online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive the latest from the world’s leading donors and decision-makers — emailed to you FREE every business day.