Nutrition for Growth summit raises $27B to end malnutrition

The Nutrition for Growth, or N4G, summit in Paris, France, has garnered $27.55 billion in commitments from donors to end malnutrition globally — breaking the record set at the previous N4G summit in Tokyo in 2021. The amount surprised many attendees: It comes amid a difficult time for fundraising as major Western donors are slashing foreign aid budgets. Chief among them is the United States, the world’s largest donor of food aid, which had pledged more than $11 billion at N4G in 2021, almost half the amount raised at that event. The U.S., which has made massive cuts to its U.S. Agency for International Development, did not make a pledge or send a delegation to Paris for this year’s gathering. Other Western donors that have announced cuts include Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. But the N4G organizers — as well as the army of nutrition advocates who joined forces to convince donors to step up — found others to more than fill the gap. Among them were the European Commission, multilateral banks, and philanthropies such as the Gates Foundation. The amount raised in Paris was first announced by French President Emmanuel Macron at an N4G side event Thursday afternoon, just after he had met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Conflict creates hunger … and hunger also creates conflict,” Macron told a roomful of world leaders, private sector CEOs, and INGOs. “And if we don’t want to re-arm, as to preserve peace — our goal nonetheless is peace — the fight we are all fighting together against malnutrition and hunger is a fight for peace.” “The health of humanity depends on what we eat, the quality of our soil, our plants, our animals," he added. Hunger, malnutrition, obesity, and diseases linked to unhealthy eating affect more than 2.8 billion people worldwide who are unable to afford a healthy diet, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization — no matter a country’s income level. N4G commitments could come in the form of financial or policy pledges, and they could be made by national governments, philanthropies, multilateral development banks, the private sector, and others. More than 400 commitments were recorded on a nutrition accountability platform that tracks the pledges. The European Commission pledged €3.4 billion through 2027 to focus on combating malnutrition in southern Africa. In addition, France committed more than €750 million by 2030; Germany pledged €870 million for the period from 2022 to 2027; and Ireland will spend €250 million annually between 2026 to 2029. “It demonstrates continued EU commitment to nutrition,” said Marjeta Jager, the European Commission’s deputy director-general for international partnerships. “Nutrition is dignity, opportunity, and life.” Among non-EU countries, Madagascar pledged to spend 5% of its national budget on nutrition, Nepal pledged more than $1 billion, and El Salvador pledged more than half a billion dollars, according to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Multilateral development banks had a bigger presence at this N4G summit compared to the last. The African Development Bank committed more than $9 billion, and the World Bank pledged $5 billion. The Asian Development Bank will announce its financial pledge at its annual meeting in Milan in May. At N4G, it released details of a seven-year partnership with Nutrition International to make nutrition-smart investments in Asia. “Our collective action can make the difference between stagnation and progress, between vulnerability and resilience,” said Afshan Khan, coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition, or SUN, Movement, at the summit’s closing ceremony Friday afternoon. “But we cannot ignore the fact that we close this summit at a time of great funding challenges. A global nutrition crisis is unfolding.” An article published in the journal Nature on Wednesday and written by the Standing Together for Nutrition Consortium attempted to quantify the impact of diminishing aid budgets — which it estimated have plunged 44% globally. It found that 2.3 million children could lose access to lifesaving treatment for severe acute malnutrition, and up to 60% of them may not survive. They project an additional 369,000 child deaths per year as a direct consequence of the aid cuts. Malnutrition interventions tend to focus on the first 1,000 days of life, from conception to a child’s second birthday. Malnutrition is the leading cause of infant mortality worldwide and is responsible for nearly half of deaths among children under age 5. However, according to World Bank data, every dollar invested in nutrition generates a $23 return — a return on investment that would be smart for any aid donor or domestic policymaker, many experts said. Among the biggest announcements in Paris came from a group of philanthropists that pledged to spend more than $2 billion on a variety of interventions to tackle malnutrition. The news was unveiled Thursday at an event hosted by Stronger Foundations for Nutrition, a coalition of philanthropic groups. Among them were the Gates Foundation, which pledged $750 million over the next four years to scale up mothers’ and children’s access to nutrition and fortify commonly consumed foods; the Bezos family, which pledged to match $500 million in donations to the UNICEF-run Child Nutrition Fund; the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, which committed at least $400 by the end of 2028 for various nutrition interventions; Kirk Humanitarian, which last year committed $125 million to scale up access to prenatal vitamins; the Rockefeller Foundation, which pledged $100 million toward school meals and food systems transformation; the Eleanor Crook Foundation, which pledged up to $50 million toward prenatal vitamins; GiveWell, which pledged $50 million to nutrition programs; the Asia Venture Philanthropy Network, or AVPN, with $10 million; and others. “Philanthropies are stepping up. But it's still a long way away from the need, which means there’s this emphasis on greater efficiency, more creative programming, more capacity building,” Roy Steiner, senior vice president for the food initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation, told Devex. On Friday, several nutrition advocates told Devex they felt a sense of rejuvenation amid aid cuts that are severely hampering their work — and optimism because their community rallied to raise funds and secure policy commitments that will allow them to carry on. For Brieuc Pont, France’s special envoy on nutrition who was charged with putting on the two-day summit, the total amount raised came as a relief, he said at an event Thursday night. “I’ve always said it’s not a beauty contest,” he said of the one-upmanship of pledging conferences. “But it feels good to feel beautiful.” Update, April 1, 2025: This article has been updated to clarify that the Bezos family pledged to match $500 million in donations to the UNICEF-run Child Nutrition Fund.