This episode explores the 2025 Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge Accountability Report, analyzing how over 100 companies have deployed approximately $440 million toward high-impact food system investments. Guests Carin Smaller and Dr. Lawrence Haddad discuss the progress made in on-farm and market-based interventions while addressing the urgent need to scale these efforts to close the $514 billion global funding gap.
This episode of Bite the Talk, hosted by Mark Gachagua, provides a comprehensive look at the Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge and its 2025 Accountability Report. The discussion centers on the progress made in 2023 and 2024 to mobilize private sector investments toward ending global hunger and malnutrition.
The State of the Pledge: The Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge, launched at the 2021 UN Food System Summit, serves as a roadmap for companies to invest in 10 high-impact areas across roughly 90 countries.
Financial Progress: To date, over 100 companies have pledged a total of $800 million, with approximately $440 million already deployed.
Investment Breakdown.
80% of commitments are core business investments rather than charity, proving the business case for food security.
Roughly half of the funding is directed toward on-farm infrastructure (irrigation, productivity), and the other half toward market interventions (cold storage, connecting rural areas).
The Accountability Framework: The episode highlights a rigorous verification process where independent consultants track company spending and outcomes every two years.
The Geographic Gap: Only 3% of deployed funds have reached the highest-priority, low-income countries, as many companies find middle-income markets less risky.
Scaling to Billions: While the pledge has reached millions, the world faces a $514 billion gap to end hunger by 2030.
The Changing Global Context: The guests acknowledge a "grim" global atmosphere where some major financial and insurance institutions are backtracking on sustainability commitments.
Over-Commitment: Despite economic downturns, five companies exceeded their original spending pledges.
Impact Indicators: For the first time, companies reported on actual outcomes, such as a project in Uganda helping farmers improve pumpkin value chains through better seeds and storage.
Leveraging Funds: Dr. Lawrence Haddad points out the extraordinary 500-to-1 return on the pledge's operating budget, having generated $151 million in incremental commitments from just $300,000 in administrative costs.
The episode concludes with a call for a more resilient development paradigm that relies less on dwindling foreign aid and more on blended finance, government regulation, and a thriving African private sector.
Mark: Hello and welcome to Bite the Talk, where we unpack the big ideas and bold commitments shaping global food systems. I'm your host, Mark Gachagua. Now today we are diving deep into something incredibly important: the Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge and its newly released 2025 Accountability Report that examines the deployment of company pledges in 2023 and 2024.
This is one of the biggest global efforts to mobilize private sector investments towards ending hunger and malnutrition. And the latest data gives us a powerful sense of what's working, what's not working, and what needs to happen next. To help us break it down, I'm joined by two leaders who know the pledge quite well.
First, I'm happy to welcome Carin Smaller, the Executive Director of Shamba Centre for Food and Climate. Now, Carin is a globally respected policy leader, a co-architect of the Zero Hunger Pledge, and one of the key designers of the accountability framework. Her work on CERES 2030 provided the evidence base for the pledge's 10 priority investment areas. And she continues to guide governments, companies, and global platforms towards more sustainable food systems. Carin, welcome to the podcast.
Carin: Thank you, Mark. It's great to be here.
Mark: And joining us is Dr. Lawrence Haddad, the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and a leading driver behind the creation and scaling of the Zero Hunger Pledge. Now, Lawrence has championed accountability and transparency from the start and has helped steer this global effort through a period of major change and uncertainty. Lawrence, it's always good to have you on the podcast.
Lawrence: Good to be here, Mark, with Carin as well. Thank you very much.
Mark: Carin, allow me to start with you. For listeners who may not know, what exactly is the Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge?
Carin: Thanks, Mark. So, as you introduced, the Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge was a way for companies to meaningfully contribute to efforts to eradicate hunger and poverty. It emerged in 2021 at the UN Food System Summit. It was a very different time then and spirits were very high and hope was very high. We had just emerged out of the pandemic and it was really a recognition that governments alone can't solve this problem of hunger and malnutrition and the private sector needs to get more involved.
It was also a time when there was growing consensus around how to end hunger and malnutrition. A lot of evidence had come out that said, "Okay, this is the roadmap. This is what it looks like. This is what we need to do." So, it was a great way to galvanize the energy of governments, civil society, private sector, and international organizations to finally eradicate hunger and malnutrition.
We used this report called CERES 2030 that you mentioned in your introduction that I was part of. That was basically the roadmap and the bill that we needed to end hunger, double the incomes and productivity of small-scale farmers, and do all this while still staying within our 1.5-degree commitment that had been made a few years earlier at the Paris climate talks. It asks companies to make financial commitments to invest in 10 areas that emerged from that report that are seen as the most high-impact areas to end hunger and malnutrition, and it asked them to invest not just in these 10 areas, but in the 90-odd countries who had not yet succeeded in eradicating hunger and malnutrition. So yes, that was the pledge.
Mark: Nice. Nice. I like what we have heard about the pledge, and accountability seems to be centered on the pledge, isn't it?
Carin: Yeah, absolutely. So, there's been lots and lots of pledges made over the years and we didn't want to repeat some of the mistakes of previous pledges and just make it about pledging. We wanted the pledges to actually be implemented in countries and on the ground. And we realized that making a pledge is easy, honoring a pledge is a whole other ballgame.
So, we wanted to make sure there was a really strong mechanism within the pledge when Lawrence and I designed it that would mean that companies couldn't just get away with the pledge and then leaving. So, we have this mechanism where every two years we hire independent consultants to basically verify the status of all the pledges to find out how much of the company's pledge has actually been deployed, what types of projects they were used to deploy it, and particularly what countries—because we wanted to make sure the money was flowing to the countries that needed it most. We also wanted to use this accountability mechanism to understand a bit better what's working, but also what's not. We wanted to hear as much the success stories as the failures.
Mark: Good. And I mean, that reflects very well even in the report, you know, what's working, what's not working. For example, the report opens with a striking level of honesty, acknowledging the declining global solidarity, companies stepping back from sustainability, and the general sense of what's happening in the world and the crisis that we are witnessing. Carin, why do you and the team choose to set this tone in the report?
Carin: Yeah, I mean, good question. Yes, we do start with a pretty grim tone, and I think we did that because, let's face it, this is how we're all feeling right now. I mean, the daily headlines that we are reading when we wake up every morning are about how more and more companies are giving up on their commitments. You know, we saw, I think most prominently, the Net Zero Banking Alliance breaking up. So, all the big banks basically giving up on their net-zero climate commitments. We've also seen the insurance companies give up on their net-zero commitments, asset managers.
So, whilst we're seeing this global picture, we wanted to acknowledge that this is what's happening, that we're in a very different world today than we were when we launched this pledge. And it's not a given anymore that companies want to be part of these movements. It's also not a given that governments want to be part of these global movements to end hunger and poverty anymore. I mean, in the last 12 months, but more so in the last 24 months, we've seen most rich countries slash their aid budgets.
We saw very shockingly and very rapidly the US closing their aid agency. It really seems like there's a backtracking. And what I think we wanted to show in this report is we acknowledge this broader context, but we have some good news to tell within it, because the hundred-odd companies that are part of our pledge are not reneging on their commitments.
And actually, in our report, you must have read it, but five companies actually overspent beyond the commitment that they had made. So, they went above and beyond. I was just reading this morning a new paper from the Harvard Business Review that was also giving me a bit more optimism. And it was saying, yes, the headlines look bad, but they looked at 75 big multinational companies, all publicly listed companies, and looked at their track record based on their ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) commitments, including their climate commitments.
And it was interesting because they found that only about 15 percent of the 75 big companies that they looked at were actually reneging. The vast majority have either stalled or are continuing to engage. They're just not being loud about it. So, there might be a little underbelly story that we're not hearing in the headlines, but that is happening—where companies are maybe not loudly talking about what they're doing, but are continuing to make these investments, continuing to make these commitments, continuing to support these kinds of initiatives. So, I'm actually, after having been part of this accountability report, I'm a lot more hopeful than I have been reading the headlines.
Mark: Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Carin. And I mean, there's a silver lining to every cloud, right? Lawrence, I was just wondering—you have a lot of experience in this industry. Obviously, you're quite familiar with the pledge. What stood out for you in this report?
Lawrence: Thank you, Mark. It's always good to listen to Carin. I'm always inspired by her. So, thank you, Carin, for your passion.
You know what? What I really was encouraged by was the increases in the commitments on those five companies. Now, we have over 100 companies in the pledge, so five doesn't sound like a very big number, but it's actually really hard to increase your commitments in a time that is not just an economic downturn—it's a kind of almost a spiritual or emotional downturn as well.
So, I think what Carin is saying about companies doing things quietly is right. That was the thing that really stood out for me. You know, even in this really difficult time—it's not just about aid, it's about trade, it's about interest rates, it's about debt repayments. It's about uncertainty that comes with the daily geopolitical lurches from over there to over there. That's terrible for business. But even with all of that mayhem going on, there are five companies, and some of them big companies, that are able to increase their pledges.
And that was the original vision of the pledge. We don't want the pledge to be something super difficult for companies to engage with. We're not asking them to move mountains. We're saying: where are you currently working geographically and where are you currently working in the food system? Let's map where you are working to see how hunger-reducing your actions are. And then once we know that, that's great.
But can you do more? And I think for the first time we did the assessment; five companies are doing more. And if we can get to a stage where half of them are doing more, we're really in business. What also gives me hope from the report is there are over three million companies that employ more than 20 people operating in Africa right now in the food system. These are formalized companies. You know, that's a huge potential for scaling.
So, I'm really encouraged by the report. How do we get from millions to billions? You know, I think most initiatives grow slowly and they show an inflection point at some point and then they take off. Like every trend, every fashion, every initiative, it takes a while for people to catch on and it takes a while for people to want to get onto the bandwagon. And I think the pledge is a wagon that's easy to get onto.
I think it's got a very clear roadmap with CERES 2030. I think the roadmap is only going to become more impactful with the new evidence piece that Carin and colleagues are working on called HESAT. I think it's only going to speed up. So, I'm really optimistic. I think the future of the pledge is probably that the global part is important and we need to keep that, but probably we need to intensify the work at the country level, especially in countries with high levels of hunger.
The pledge is one part of the solution. It can't be the whole solution, right? Because companies are not going to work in countries or in regions in countries where the market just isn't functioning or where people just cannot get to the market because of conflict and crisis. So, the pledge is only going to ever be a part of the solution.
Governments have to make it easier for companies to make the pledge. They have to improve the infrastructure of markets and roads. They have to invest in Ag R&D and they have to guarantee the peace. So, they have a role to play and the companies are never going to provide kind of emergency assistance like social protection. So, governments have a big role to play. We know that. But I think what this report shows is that the private sector is playing a big role and can play an even bigger role.
Mark: Thank you, Lawrence. And, you know, speaking of numbers and keeping up with the theme, Carin, do you mind taking us through the big findings of the report? You know, what did the 2023 and 2024 accountability cycle reveal?
Carin: Sure. Thanks, Mark. So just to nerd in a bit and just give you a few numbers: we've got around just over a hundred companies that have pledged. They have collectively pledged, including this over-commitment that we got in the last reporting period, $800 million, and they've pledged that in 50-odd priority countries.
So, what we did was we applied our reporting mechanism to all companies that have pledged more than a million dollars, and that's roughly a quarter of the companies. So, 24 out of the hundred-odd companies have pledged more than a million. And then the others are a mix of micro, small and medium-sized companies, and they can self-report to us, but they're not made to undergo the more rigorous independent verification.
So, we looked at that quarter—the 24—16 participated in the report, four of them are a bit new, so haven't reported yet, four unfortunately didn't report, two of which we are removing from the pledge because they have now not reported for two years, so that's part of the bad news. But of those that did report, we basically found that in the last cycle, the last two years, they've deployed $214 million of our total.
This is our second reporting cycle. So, it goes on top of the first two-year reporting cycle. So, we're now basically at around $440 million that's been deployed already out of our $800 million total. So, we're roughly half the way there, which is pretty good news. Now, the other good news from our point of view is that most of these investments are not charitable investments. We didn't want the pledge to be about companies giving out charity.
We wanted this pledge to be about driving more private sector investment in the areas and in the countries that need it most. We didn't want this to be a charity handout exercise. And the good news is that 80% of the pledge commitments are what we call core business investments. So, 80% of what companies commit is because they're saying, "This makes business sense for us." We're not doing this out of the goodness of our hearts. We're doing it because it makes business sense.
And that's exactly the type of private sector engagement we wanted to be tapping into. We have in our areas 10 high-impact areas where companies can invest in, and they're roughly organized around three "buckets."
On-farm investments: To improve infrastructure like irrigation, electrification, roads, and productivity improvements through better seeds and fertilizers.
Market-type interventions: Helping improve cold storage units in markets so that perishable foods can last longer or helping connect rural areas to market infrastructure.
Empowering the excluded: Investments about helping the consumer get access to the food being provided in the marketplace.
For me, the other piece of good news is that roughly half the money is going into those on-farm investments, which are absolutely critical to making sure the productive base is working. The other roughly half is going into the market-based interventions. And a small pie is going into consumption-related interventions. Now, some people might say that sounds bad—like surely there should be companies more involved at that consumption level. But actually, that consumption level is very much a public sector role of providing social protection or school meals or food vouchers. We're not sure how much private sector involvement we want in those types of programs. We want much more private sector involvement in the market and on the farm.
The bad side is, as I said, not all of our companies have reported and two of them are being removed. But the bigger bad news is that only 3% of the money deployed was going to our highest priority countries—the really poorest, low-income countries. Instead, what we see—and many people would say this is quite unsurprising—is that it's easier for the private sector to go to middle-income countries because the markets there are more developed. So, I think really a major finding for us is seeing how we can get more private sector involvement in those lowest-income countries.
Mark: Sure. And I agree with you, Carin. And in fact, I wanted to request Lawrence to talk about this more because having only 3% of the projects being in the high priority countries, that's a major gap. Lawrence, when you hear 3%, what does that spark in you?
Lawrence: Yeah, I think I have two reflections. First of all, there are lots of poor and hungry people in lower middle-income countries. You think of big countries like India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan. These have lots and lots of poor people in them. There may be a small percentage of the population, but because the populations are so big, there are large numbers of hungry people in those countries.
Second thing, it's not really surprising that the poorest, most fragile contexts don't attract a lot of private sector investment because of uncertainty and worries about risk and insurance. But the point is here that governments can change that. I've been working with my colleagues in Somalia. Somalia is one of the most fragile places around. But the Somalian government is making a big effort to mobilize international resources. It's doing all the things it can do to create the enabling environment. It's adopting responsible policies. It's promoting accountability. It's investing in data. It's preparing investment cases that are financeable. It's reaching out to the financiers.
So, yes, we'd like companies to invest more in the poorest countries, but the poorest countries themselves can do something to attract the investment. And we shouldn't be too dismissive of investments in lower middle-income countries because they still contain very large pockets of poverty and hunger.
Mark: I think it's a well-known government responsibility, especially when we talk about business. It's their duty to make sure that there is an enabling environment for the private sector to thrive. Let's shift the gears a bit and talk about the areas where we are seeing more investments. The report shows exactly where companies are putting their money. What are the top investment areas, Carin?
Carin: So, as I mentioned before, what we're seeing is roughly half the money, about $100 million, is going on the farm, which is exactly where we want to see money going to improve productivity and move farmers out of subsistence into more commercially oriented farming. Another just under half is going into these market investments—helping to improve food loss and helping to keep foods for longer shelf lives by having better storage. And then a small amount going to consumer protection, but not necessarily where we're wanting to see the private sector too busy. It's really in the market and on the farm where we want to see strong private sector participation.
Mark: Thank you, Carin. And Lawrence, why do you think reducing post-harvest loss is getting so much traction nowadays?
Lawrence: Well, I think food loss is one of those things that's everyone's business, but nobody's responsibility in a way. Individual companies can do a lot to minimize food loss in the part of the value chain that they control. And they have a very strong incentive to do that because it affects their bottom line. It also feeds into their emissions ambitions because food loss is essentially wasted emissions.
But food loss is a bit like water traveling through a pipe. You know, you can slow down the water loss from a pipe by filling in all the holes. But if there's one hole in the pipe, the water is going to get out. And government has a big role to play in working with all the private sector actors throughout the food value chain to try to figure out how to minimize overall loss.
When there's food loss in a value chain, there isn't that same sense of urgency as a leaking pipe because the degradation is cumulative and slow. It's not easy to pinpoint the blame. So, I think food loss is an "no-brainer" for companies to invest in, but it only works up to a point because the whole system has to be food-loss-prevention-proofed.
I was sad that two companies had to leave the pledge, but I was really pleased that we removed them, because we can't have free riding. We are not under any illusions that the private sector is uniformly wonderful. We know that different players have different levels of performance, just as most governments do.
Mark: Thank you, Lawrence. And I like the analogy you shared earlier about the water and the pipe. Coming back to you, Carin—talking about outcomes. I think for the first time, companies were asked to report on outcome indicators and not just investment numbers. What did you learn from this shift?
Carin: Yeah, exactly. So basically, what we were trying to do here is say, "Okay, we don't just want to be a pledging platform." We wanted to go that extra mile and say, "Did the money you spend actually lead to any positive outcomes on our hunger, malnutrition, and climate indicators?"
Now, I have to be completely honest: we did not do a full impact evaluation. We did not have the resources or the time. It would have taken years. So, we're still not fully reporting on outcomes in the way that all of us would dream to, but we're trying to push companies to report back to us on whether any of this money is actually leading to something good.
The first thing is that a number of companies did actually report back to us on these impact indicators. Some of it was verified independently. Most of it was not. So, it's really anecdotal at this stage. But I think there was certainly quite a strong engagement. We had a great story from one of the companies that was helping improve pumpkin value chains in Uganda by giving farmers better seeds and production methods. We had another company using hybrid seeds to improve the uptake of drought-resistant fruit and vegetable seeds.
So, there we've got really interesting stories—one about income and nutrition (the pumpkin story), and the other about adapting to climate change. It's those small-scale farmers who are the first victims of climate change. So, I think we've got some good stories there. It’s moving us away from just pledging to impact.
Mark: I love the pumpkin story. I love pumpkins myself. And sticking with the impact indicators, Lawrence, from your perspective, how transformative can this be?
Lawrence: I think whenever you ask anyone what impact looks like to them, you go through a process of clarification. Anything we can do to get from pledging to action to impact is critical. Carin's right, though—it will be a challenge to measure the impact in a classical "with and without" or "before and after" assessment. That's the gold standard, but it's very difficult.
You have to remember that this pledge is essentially being run on a shoestring. I think the budget, Carin, is about $150,000 a year. If you do a benefit-cost ratio, and you think that the pledge has generated another $151 million in incremental commitments through two years of $150,000 budgets... by my calculation, that's a 500-to-1 return. That's extraordinary.
We could do so much more if we had, I don't know, $500,000 a year to spend. This is peanuts, honestly. It's a real shame that we haven't been able to attract more investment to help with the mechanics of running this thing, because you don't get many 500-to-1 investments around.
Mark: It's true. It's not easy to come across a 500-to-1 investment case. Carin, how do we scale from millions to billions?
Carin: This is the big, decades-long development question. I think the last time the UN convened the finance community, it was around scaling from billions to trillions. We're a bit more modest here. A recent study found we need an additional $514 billion between now and 2030 to end hunger. And we've only got $800 million so far in private sector commitment.
The public sector will and should play the greatest role, but we won't fill that gap with public money alone. We need to use scarce public money better to make markets work so that the private sector is functioning properly and investing anyway.
We have been championing the role of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). More than two-thirds of our companies are SMEs. GAIN has this wonderful facility called N3F, which I'm a huge fan of, that is trying to make loans to SMEs to help them get off the ground. They are going where no commercial bank will go. But N3F is a drop in the ocean. SMEs alone need an additional $160 billion a year. We need the development banks—the World Bank, African Development Bank—to step up and start providing the finance that this "missing middle" needs.
Mark: Lawrence, anything you want to add?
Lawrence: Yeah, just to say, I agree completely. We need to scale the funding, but to do that, we need to scale the ideas. We need to use small amounts of ODA (Official Development Assistance) to leverage much bigger resource flows from the private sector and International Finance Institutions.
Carin mentioned N3F, which is co-led by GAIN and Incofin. It's a $60 million to $80 million proof of concept. If that works, we should be pushing the development banks to implement these kinds of mechanisms.
The other incredible opportunity is getting better nutrition for workers. There are 300 or 400 million employees in Africa's food system. If we can get better nutrition to them, that improves the bottom line—healthier workers, less absenteeism, higher productivity. This is where philanthropy can provide that initial startup funding that sets the private sector financing train in motion.
Mark: Thank you, Lawrence. Carin, what keeps you motivated leading this work?
Carin: So, what Lawrence knows about me, but you don't, is I was actually born and grew up in South Africa during apartheid. I'm a white South African, so I was one of those who benefited from apartheid. And that's what really motivates me—that struggle against injustice and inequality, and that fight to give everybody an equal chance to succeed and live without hunger. I don't want that injustice to end through handouts. I want it to end because things are working the way they should and there is a thriving private sector in Africa.
Mark: Thank you, Carin. Lawrence, what gives you hope when you think about the future of the pledge?
Lawrence: For me, Mark, what drives me forward is some of my initial work in "breadbasket" areas where most of the country's food was produced. And despite that, everyone I came across in the villages was hungry. This disabuses you of the notion that food production equals hunger reduction. Hunger and malnutrition are about justice and where you happen to have been born.
What gives me hope is knowing that no matter how hard it gets for us, it's infinitely harder for people who don't know where the next meal is going to come from. I think this period of vandalism against development—where aid is dying as we know it—is forcing us to rethink development in a more resilient form. We're going to come out of it with a stronger paradigm that is less dependent on a few big players. That gives me hope.
Mark: Thank you, Lawrence and Carin, for the wonderful insights. This has been such an insightful discussion. To our listeners, thank you for tuning in. The full Accountability Report is available online. I've been your host, Mark Gachagua, and this has been Bite the Talk.
See you next time.