Keypoints:
- Africa lacks visibility over food financing
- 3FS exposes critical investment gaps
- Tracking must enter annual budgets
AFRICA’S agrifood financing debate has long focused on how to mobilise more money. Yet the 2026 Financing Agri-Food Systems Sustainably Summit, held in Nairobi, underscored a more fundamental problem: countries cannot direct, coordinate or assess investments they cannot clearly track.
Financial-flow tracking should therefore become part of every country’s agrifood architecture. Without it, governments cannot align budgets with priorities, expose funding gaps, coordinate development finance or judge whether spending is improving nutrition, livelihoods and climate resilience — and whether scarce public resources are delivering measurable value.
At GAIN’s side event, we focused on three practical questions that should sit at the heart of every financing strategy: How much is being invested in food systems? Where is the money coming from? And where is it being used?
My conclusion is straightforward. Africa’s agrifood financing challenge is not only a shortage of capital. It is also a shortage of visibility.
A crisis beyond business as usual
The latest Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition estimates that more than 306 million people in Africa were undernourished in 2024. Nearly 893 million people faced moderate or severe food insecurity, while 67 percent of the continent’s population could not afford a healthy diet.
These figures expose the scale of the emergency, but the financing system remains poorly matched to it. Bank credit to agriculture represents less than four percent of total credit in Africa. Foreign direct investment in food and agriculture is highly concentrated in a small number of countries and often remains below $2bn a year.
Small and medium-sized agrifood enterprises remain trapped in the ‘missing middle’: too large for microfinance, yet frequently considered too small or risky for commercial banks.
More funding is clearly required. But mobilising additional money is not enough. Governments and development partners must also understand what is already being spent, where it originates, whether it aligns with national priorities and which parts of the food system remain neglected.
Financing evidence reveals hard truths
The report External Development Financial Flows to Food Systems: Deep Dive on Africa’s Food Systems, produced by IFAD with AKADEMIYA2063 and IFPRI, shows why this matters.
External development finance for African food systems rose by 19 percent, from $18.1bn in 2018 to $21.5bn in 2023, reaching $117bn over six years. Yet 23 percent of that financing went to food assistance, while just 11 of Africa’s 55 countries received half of the total.
Emergency assistance saves lives and must remain available when crises strike. But this pattern also shows how repeated emergencies absorb resources that are needed for prevention, resilience and long-term transformation.
Africa must strike a better balance between crisis response and sustained investment in nutrition, climate resilience, infrastructure, local enterprises and inclusive livelihoods. That requires governments to see the entire financing picture rather than viewing projects, sectors and funding sources in isolation.
Why the 3FS tool matters
This is where the Financial Flows to Food Systems tool, known as 3FS, becomes important.
Developed by IFAD and the World Bank in collaboration with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture and the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub, 3FS provides a comparable framework for tracking expenditure across agricultural development and value chains, food systems infrastructure, nutrition and health, social assistance, and climate change and natural resources.
The tool gives decision-makers financial intelligence. It helps them determine whether spending reflects stated priorities, which sectors benefit and where expenditure must be increased, redirected or better coordinated.
It can also support alignment between domestic public resources and international development finance. As the methodology develops, it should help countries build a more complete picture of responsible private-sector investment.
The framework was piloted in Kenya, Niger and Peru, producing findings that informed national discussions on investment priorities. It is now being extended to additional countries, including Benin, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania.
The lesson is that financing profiles differ considerably. Strategies cannot simply be copied from one country to another. Each government needs evidence rooted in its institutions, fiscal realities and agrifood priorities.
Kenya shows what visibility reveals
Kenya’s national 3FS analysis found that the government spent about $6.5bn on food systems between the 2018/19 and 2021/22 financial years. Around three-quarters of that expenditure was financed through national revenues.
Agricultural development, value chains and food systems infrastructure together received more than 56 percent of expenditure. Nutrition and health received about 12 percent, while climate change and natural resources received about nine percent.
These findings do not, by themselves, determine what the ideal allocation should be. They do, however, create a basis for serious policy discussion. They allow decision-makers to ask whether spending patterns can deliver healthier diets and stronger resilience alongside increased production.
GAIN has also undertaken a county-level 3FS initiative in close collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, Kisumu County Government, AKADEMIYA2063, FAO and IFAD, with funding from the Embassy of Ireland in Kenya.
The Kisumu County findings were formally presented during the FINAS summit, demonstrating why subnational tracking matters. In decentralised systems, national figures alone cannot reveal how resources are allocated, executed or experienced at county and community levels.
Make tracking part of public finance
Developing countries should institutionalise financial-flow tracking within annual budgeting, public expenditure reviews and national agrifood investment plans.
Ministries of finance and planning must be involved alongside ministries responsible for agriculture, health, climate, trade and social protection. In decentralised countries such as Kenya, the methodology should also be adapted and scaled to subnational levels.
The resulting data should be updated regularly and made accessible through public dashboards. One-off assessments are useful, but transformation requires a continuing ability to detect shifts, identify emerging gaps and assess whether financing is moving towards national commitments.
Financial tracking must also be connected to results. Countries should link expenditure data to nutrition, climate, gender, employment and value-for-money outcomes.
This evidence should inform decisions on repurposing public spending, developing investable project pipelines and using blended finance, guarantees and climate finance to attract responsible private capital.
Turn political ambition into action
Africa’s Kampala CAADP agenda provides the political direction for building resilient, inclusive and high-performing agrifood systems. Tools such as 3FS can provide the financial intelligence needed to translate that direction into funded priorities, accountable budgets and investable programmes.
The next stage of Africa’s agrifood transformation will not be achieved through declarations alone. It will depend on whether countries can align domestic resources, development finance and private investment around measurable food, nutrition, livelihood and climate outcomes.
Developing countries cannot finance what they cannot see. Expanding and institutionalising 3FS can help governments move from assumptions to evidence, from fragmented projects to coordinated portfolios and from financing activities to investing in the outcomes Africa urgently needs.
Ruth Okowa is the Country Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition in Kenya.
