Scaling up nutrition investments following Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit

The recent Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in Paris came at a critical time, with development support for nutrition-specific interventions stagnating over the last few years and recent foreign aid cuts creating further uncertainty on how progress will be made.

A key outcome from the N4G Summit is the Paris Declaration on Business and Nutrition 2030, which sets out a clear call to action for reigniting momentum towards global nutrition goals. To bridge the current nutrition funding gap, the Declaration calls for the investment community – including DFIs and MDBs – to do more on embedding nutrition into investment strategies. This includes scaling up concessional finance to de-risk private investment in businesses which increase the affordability and availability of nutritious foods for low-income consumers, as well as encouraging investors to incentivize portfolio companies to report on and improve the healthiness of their product portfolios.

Over the past few years, Wellspring has worked with USAID and USDFC to develop a simple nutrition-lens investing framework and investment screening tool. This framework provides guidance to investors to identify investments which can lead to more positive nutrition outcomes e.g. through increasing volumes of nutritious food produced, improving processing and packaging, and decreasing losses of nutritious foods through improved storage and distribution. We’d encourage DFIs, impact investors, and other funds who are considering scaling up investments in nutrition to explore the framework and tool.