Hunger is a solvable problem. It is not inevitable. But ending hunger in a lasting way will take everyone doing their part. The United States invests significant resources in improving global food security and nutrition, including through Feed the Future and other nutrition programs. But the U.S. cannot and should not do it alone. That is why Bread for the World advocates for U.S. support of international financial institutions such as the World Bank. These organizations are critical partners in efforts to reduce hunger in lower-income countries by resolving its main causes. 

The World Bank’s fund for the lowest-income countries, the International Development Association (IDA), finances development projects in low-income countries through either grants or loans with very low interest rates. This means that IDA’s continued operation requires significant support from donors, who pledge contributions to its replenishment every three years.  During the last replenishment, in 2021, Bread for the World and our partner organizations advocated for and won a significant increase in the U.S. pledge to IDA. The U.S. committed $3.5 billion over three years, a $500 million increase from its previous pledge. 

This year is IDA21, the 21st replenishment. Bread will again advocate for additional resources to enable low-income countries to strengthen their economies. The world seems to be at a tipping point. Making progress against the solvable problem of hunger depends on action and funding. Right now, the world is not doing enough. It is off-track to end hunger and malnutrition, which is one of the Sustainable Development Goals the world committed to achieving by 2030. 

This is why leaders are calling for increases in IDA’s funding.  World Bank President Ajay Banga says this needs to be the largest replenishment of IDA of all time. A high-level expert group commissioned by the G20 has called for a tripling of IDA’s resources, from $93 billion to $279 billion, by the next replenishment. Bread joins these calls to increase IDA’s ability to provide funding to low-income countries for their development needs.

IDA works. The World Bank tells the story of Volatsarasoa, who lives in southern Madagascar in the village of Malangy. She participated in IDA’s Fiavota Program at the height of the country’s 2016 drought. Volatsarasoa received financial assistance from the program as well as training on how to manage money. She also learned agricultural practices that make her livelihood more resilient to droughts. Raising livestock and growing drought-resistant crops have made her income less dependent on rainfall. Volatsarasoa reported that she was able to put her children back in school because of IDA’s Fiavota Program and that the training and funding she received saved her, her children, and also future generations from hunger. 

Volatsarasoa is now helping others. The elected leader of 25 young women and girls, she is teaching them her skills and “rebuild[ing] dignity in the hard-struck community.”  The group maintains a communal garden and is saving money to repair essential infrastructure such as the community well. 

IDA funding is also currently being used to “promote child development, restore and expand access to quality early years services, including maternal and nutrition services” in at least 30 countries, and to improve agricultural productivity in 15 countries. 

A successful IDA replenishment will require the U.S. and other donors to increase their pledges for the next three-year cycle. This is a good investment, one that produces real results for people living with hunger and extreme poverty in the lowest-income countries. IDA is a key piece of the puzzle as we work together to solve hunger.

Jordan Teague Jacobs is co-director, Policy and Research Institute, at Bread for the World.

Washington, D.C., June 2, 2023 – Today, Bread for the World released the following statement welcoming new World Bank President Ajay Banga. The statement can be attributed to Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World:

“Bread for the World welcomes Ajay Banga in his new role as president of the World Bank. Mr. Banga begins his tenure during an unprecedented time, with multiple ongoing and overlapping global crises – including a global food crisis.

“As many as 828 million people are experiencing hunger and 349 million people are on the verge of starvation. Without immediate action by the World Bank and others, we will see a more dramatic and life-threatening rise in food insecurity and malnutrition in the coming months.

“Bread looks forward to working with Mr. Banga and his staff to make the global food crisis a top priority. This includes directing additional financing targeted for smallholder farmers, especially women, and supporting countries as they adapt to climate change and transform their food systems to be healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable.

Bread for the World is a Christian advocacy organization urging U.S. decision makers to do all they can to pursue a world without hunger 

Bread Welcomes New World Bank President Ajay Banga

Is the international development and humanitarian financing system set up to deal with on going and spiraling global crises?

For several years, Bread for the World has been sounding the alarm about multiple overlapping crises that have caused soaring rates of global hunger and even several instances of the worst-case hunger scenario–famine.

Bread advocates have been winning increases in U.S. funding to respond to these immediate needs, including an additional $1 billion for famine relief in 2017 and $5 billion for global emergency food and nutrition responses in 2022.

Nonetheless, people continue to suffer through the worst global hunger crisis of the past 30 years. And it is likely that widespread hunger will continue as the global pandemic enters its fourth year and Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its second. Nevertheless, Bread for the World will continue to focus advocacy efforts on the enormous humanitarian challenges and the resources needed to save lives.

One major problem for low-and middle-income countries is debt and the large sums needed to pay even the interest on loans. The debt crisis is not new. Previous debt relief efforts, such as the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and its successors, offered some breathing space. The impact was largely temporary, however, particularly as national governments began to incur additional debt to fund ongoing budgetary needs, including COVID-19 response and safety-net programs.

As a result, more than 60 percent of low-income countries are in debt distress or at high risk of it. This is double the proportion of countries that struggled to repay their debts in 2015. The impact of high debt repayments is to push agriculture, food security, and other essential spending to the edges of the budget or out of it altogether.

All of this raises the question: Is the international development and humanitarian financing system set up to deal with on going and spiraling global crises?

Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados is among many who argue that it is not. Last year, Mottley proposed the Bridgetown Agenda, a plan to reform the international financial system. Bread expects many elements of the Bridgetown Agenda to be raised in global forums this year.

First, it is clear that the global debt system is unsustainable. It is preventing countries from responding to crises and investing in their own development. The Bridgetown Agenda calls for immediate action to end the debt crisis, including action by donors like the United States to reallocate excess Special Drawing Rights to lower-income countries. The U.S. has pledged to donate a portion of its Special Drawing Rights through the International Monetary Fund, but Congress has yet to appropriate the necessary funds.

Second, in the coming years, continuing overlapping crises will likely require evermore resources, while national budgets, even of wealthier countries like the U.S. ,will be increasingly constrained. The Bridgetown Agenda endorses proposals to reform the multilateral development banks (MDBs) and optimize the use of their assets and resources. Analysts argue that this would increase the amount of financing available to low-and middle-income countries to $1 trillion without requiring additional funding from donor countries. Last month, the World Bank Group released a road map for evolving its mission and funding capacity to help solve today’s global problems.

Third, current international financing mechanisms were not designed to fund either preventive measures for climate disasters or disasters that affect more than one country simultaneously. Beyond calling for immediate action to ensure funding for climate change and other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Bridgetown Agenda proposes a reconstruction fund to make grants to countries that suffer climate disasters rather than relying on one-time appeals for individual countries.

In an era of recurrent, ongoing, and overlapping crises, the global community must examine and perhaps reimagine, its structures and systems to ensure that resources are used as effectively and efficiently as possible.

The goal of ensuring that no one goes hungry calls for new strategies and resources in the face of today’s crises.

Jordan Teague is interim director, policy analysis and coalition building, with Bread for the World.

New Global Financing Strategies Are Needed in 2023

Bread for the World is encouraged to see a renewed commitment to and recognition of GAFSP’s importance in the global food security financing landscape. 

At last month’s Global Food Security Summit, convened by the United States, European Union, African Union, Spain, Germany, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Colombia alongside the annual United Nations General Assembly, President Biden announced $2.9 billion in new assistance from the U.S. government to address global food insecurity.

The announcement included $150 million for the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, or GAFSP, a multilateral financing initiative Bread for the World has championed.

GAFSP is unique among international financial institutions in that its programs provide financing not only to country governments and private sector companies but also directly to farmers. For example, GAFSP gave grants to two farmers’ organizations in Senegal, l’Association des producteurs de la vallée du fleuve Gambie and Yacare Niani Wulli, so that they could purchase the materials needed to improve their production of organic bananas as well as two water pumping stations – bananas famously need a great deal of water to grow and thrive. The two grants reached a total of 1,685 people, including 979 women.  

The United States was pivotal in founding GAFSP, along with other G-20 countries, as part of its response to the global food crisis of 2007-2008. In 2012, the United States led the way in mobilizing additional funds for GAFSP by pledging to contribute $1 to GAFSP for every $2 from other donors, up to a maximum U.S. contribution of $475 million.

The goal was reached by 2015, after which U.S. contributions to GAFSP dropped significantly. This fall’s announcement of new funding reverses that trend.

The U.S. contribution of $150 million enabled GAFSP to launch a new round of funding for food security projects, both those that respond to hunger emergencies and those that build medium- to long-term resilience in food systems. Both are extremely important to ending hunger in our lifetime. This financing will be a critical piece of the puzzle, supporting lower-income countries, communities, and smallholder farmers as they figure out ways of reducing the impact of current crises and establishing an economic recovery with a more sustainable, resilient food system.

Bread for the World is encouraged to see a renewed commitment to and recognition of GAFSP’s importance in the global food security financing landscape. In a global food crisis such as the one we face in 2022, everyone needs to come to the table to help achieve the needed transformations in the global food system and to ensure that everyone has access to healthy, nutritious food for themselves and their families.

GAFSP provides an opportunity for governments, civil society, producer organizations, and the private sector to come together to improve global access to healthy foods.

Innovative Partnerships to Respond to Hunger

Bread for the World believes it will take the efforts of everyone, including the United States and multilateral institutions such as the IFIs, to create a world without hunger.

New data shows that global hunger has again increased in the past year. Between 2020 and 2021, an additional 46 million people—about as many people as the entire population of Spain—were newly facing hunger.

Conflict, climate change, weak government institutions, and the global COVID-19 pandemic are major causes of hunger, as Bread for the World has previously reported. The current war in Ukraine means that less food is available, and prices are higher in countries that need to import food.  

The worst hunger situation of all—famine—affects 750,000 people in Ethiopia, South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan. That is up from 600,000 in January 2022. Both numbers are far higher than in recent years. In fact, between 2000 and 2010, the world had no declared famines at all. Humanitarian agencies define famine in terms that include starvation, death, and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition.

In May, Congress allocated about $5 billion in emergency funding for global food, nutrition, and humanitarian assistance to help families around the world survive. The United States has always been a leading contributor to emergency humanitarian assistance, but the country has never been alone in this effort.

In April, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen convened several international financial institutions (IFIs), which are groups with multiple countries as members that are concerned with the global economy and financing international development. At the April event, “Tackling Food Insecurity — The Challenge and Call to Action,” these U.S. partners agreed to develop an IFI Action Plan to Address Food Insecurity, which was launched in May.

The action plan emphasizes coordination to support the most vulnerable people in the most effective ways. Goals include increasing food production immediately, providing fertilizer where there are shortages, and encouraging trade to help reduce food prices. The action plan acknowledges that ending hunger requires long-term solutions as well. The IFIs have committed to a strategy of investing in agriculture and smallholder farmers in ways that enable farmers to strengthen their responses to climate change and other long-lasting problems that have no complete solution in the short term.

Individual IFIs are developing and implementing detailed plans as well. The World Bank, perhaps the most well-known IFI, has committed an additional $12 billion over the next year to improve food and nutrition security. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (better known as IFAD), the only IFI focused exclusively on global hunger and agriculture, has launched a Crisis Response Initiative to identify and provide solutions to food insecurity in African and Asian countries.  The African Development Bank has proposed a $1.5 billion African Emergency Food Production Facility to support 20 million farmers with seed, fertilizer, and other necessities.

The United States is a committed partner to the IFIs. In December 2021, at the most recent replenishment of funds for the International Development Association, the arm of the World Bank that makes grants and low-interest loans to lower-income countries, the U.S. government pledged $3.5 billion over three years. This is essential support for the IFIs, but because of the enormous numbers of people who are hungry right now, the United States should do more.

Each IFI fills particular needs, so the U.S. government should make generous pledges, commensurate with today’s increasingly severe hunger crisis, to replenish the funds of each as its cycle comes up for renewal. This year is the year to commit new funds to the African Development Fund and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program.

Jordan Teague is interim director of policy analysis and coalition building with Bread for the World.

Global partners step up response to hunger

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased hunger significantly, with as many as 161 million additional people facing hunger in 2020 than a year before.

One reason is the sudden halt of most global economic activity. Billions of people were unable to go to work as the world went into quarantine in an effort to avoid further spread of the virus. Large numbers of people lost their incomes from formal-sector jobs, and farmers in many parts of  world were unable to travel to their fields to tend crops.

The strains on healthcare systems also led to increased hunger and malnutrition. Resources had to be diverted from other health concerns to treating COVID patients. One result was that vital services for young children and pregnant women, such as vaccinations against childhood diseases and vitamin and mineral supplements, were unavailable to many.

Many low- and middle-income countries simply do not have the resources to mount a response to the pandemic like the ones seen in higher-income countries such as the United States. People have often been left to cope with severe economic and health impacts on their own.

One among several reasons that countries don’t have the resources they need to recover from the pandemic is that too many have unsustainable debt levels. Some debts are owed to international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), others to private sector entities. Paying interest on these debts consumes funds that low- and middle-income countries urgently need to cover needs arising from  the pandemic.

Last month, the IMF issued a new allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), with $274 billion worth of SDRs going to low- and middle-income countries. SDRs are essentially a line of credit that the IMF offers its member countries. They can be exchanged for cash and the funds used for any purpose, including administering COVID-19 vaccines, treating children with malnutrition, providing families with food packages, and establishing and extending social protection programs.

Over the past several months, Bread for the World joined with our coalition partners to urge the U.S. government to support a new allocation of SDRs. Bread for the World’s policy memo to the Biden-Harris administration emphasized a new issuance of SDRs as a critical component of a comprehensive global COVID-19 response plan.

As a member of the Steering Committee of the IFI Working Group, Bread for the World also offered the Treasury Department more detailed information and specific points in support of the new SDR allocation. It included ways for U.S.  international assistance to support IFIs in a proposed policy package that included a new issuance of SDRs.

In addition, Bread, along with more than 250 other organizations and individuals, advocated at the global level by signing Jubilee USA’s letter to the G20 group of industrialized nations. The letter called for prompt approval of an SDR allocation to support countries’ crisis response and recovery efforts.

This recent work on global financial policy continues Bread’s longstanding work on debt relief and other fiscal initiatives that provide  support to efforts to end hunger. Perhaps most notably, Bread members worked to secure billions of dollars in debt relief as part of the Proclaim Jubilee 2000 effort and the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiatives. Countries with unsustainable debt burdens were able to reallocate money previously spent on debt service to health and education. 

Now, with access to $274 billion in financial resources they did not have before, lower-income countries will be better able to stave off future financial crises and invest in COVID-19 response and recovery initiatives such as food and nutrition assistance.

This is one example of the behind-the-scenes work that Bread for the World does, day in and day out, year after year, to win U.S. government policy change that works for people experiencing hunger and poverty.

Special Drawing Rights: More resources for hunger and nutrition

We usually think of U.S. development assistance as funding that the United States sends directly to another country. Bread advocacy generally focuses on winning policy improvements and budget increases for this country-to-country assistance, often called bilateral assistance. Over the years, Bread has worked with Congress and the administration to ensure that projects supported by bilateral assistance include ending hunger and malnutrition as a top priority.

In addition to legislative successes such as the passage and reauthorization of the Global Food Security Act (GFSA), which created Feed the Future, and winning funding increases for important development initiatives such as Child Survival, Bread advocates have helped create change within the executive branch. For example, the U.S. government adopted a “whole of government” nutrition strategy after Bread advocates and our partners made the case that early childhood nutrition impacts the entire course of a person's life.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) manages most bilateral funding, allocating resources to projects in health, nutrition, education, and other sectors. These programs and funds are vital to Bread’s mission of ending hunger, malnutrition, and extreme poverty. In addition, the United States is a key donor and a leader in encouraging other countries to contribute bilateral assistance.

There is another, lower-profile type of U.S. development assistance that also advances Bread’s mission--"multilateral” assistance. Since bilateral assistance is between two countries, you might guess that multilateral assistance is among several countries, and you would be right. The United States is a member of several international financial institutions, usually called simply IFIs.

IFIs include, among others, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. The United States and other donors invest funds in these institutions that are then pooled and made available to low- and middle-income countries in the form of grants or low-interest loans.

IFIs are important to the effort to end hunger since they are the largest source of international finance for many countries. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, IFIs have mobilized record levels of resources to support countries in responding to the health and economic consequences of the pandemic. As Bread has pointed out, surges in global hunger and malnutrition are among the pandemic's most devastating impacts.

The World Bank, through its International Development Association (IDA), has the largest amount of lower-cost financin available to low-income countries. Since the food price crisis of 2008, IDA has more than tripled its annual financing for food security, from $2 billion to $6.8 billion in fiscal year 2020. Since the pandemic began, IDA has made new commitments of $5.3 billion for food security initiatives, and an additional $6.6 billion for food security is planned for this year.

Notably, half of these new resources will help meet immediate food needs, and half will go to efforts to build more lasting food security. If you’ve followed along with us at Bread for the World, you know that we believe both are necessary and we advocate for both.

IDA has also made available $500 million in "crisis response" funding, intended to help countries prepare for and respond to crises that develop more slowly than a sudden disaster. Hunger emergencies are usually crises that develop over time, not overnight. Hopefully, the funding will enable countries to respond to some crises in the making and thus avoid major catastrophes.

In addition to IDA, the World Bank also houses the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, known by the acronym GAFSP. Established in response to the 2008 food price crisis, GAFSP pools donor resources for programs in food security, nutrition, and agriculture. The funding is in the form of either grants or low-cost loans made to governments, producer organizations, and civil society organizations. The U.S. component of GAFSP is Feed the Future. Since 2010, GAFSP has invested more than $1.6 billion in 39 countries. Since the global pandemic began, GAFSP has allocated nearly $60 million in additional funding to 15 countries to help them respond to hunger crises caused or exacerbated by the pandemic. 

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), mentioned earlier, is a specialized agency of the United Nations. IFAD was established in the 1970s in response to that decade’s episodes of food shortages, malnutrition, and famine. IFAD is the only IFI devoted exclusively to transforming agriculture, including rural economies, and food systems. It works to make these sectors more inclusive, productive, resilient, and sustainable.

In 2020, IFAD launched a multi-donor COVID-19 Rural Poor Stimulus Facility. Begun with $40 million in seed funding, the facility is expected to raise at least $200 million from other donors. The funding will be used to help preserve the livelihoods and jobs of low-income, vulnerable rural people or, failing that, to enable them to recover more quickly. It does this by supporting agricultural production, access to financial and agricultural markets, and access to new jobs.

Two other important IFIs are the African Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Each has increased its funding commitments to respond to the pandemic. Along with the IFIs mentioned earlier, the two regional banks have invested in food security initiatives such as providing support for farmers to purchase seeds, livestock, and other necessities; giving families cash assistance to purchase food; distributing packages of food; and supporting food banks.

As the United States and other high-income countries with access to COVID-19 vaccines begin to emerge from the pandemic, Bread emphasizes the importance of global vaccine equity. The International Monetary Fund noted recently that recovery paths are starkly divergent for lower-income countries and households compared with wealthier nations. The IFIs need continued support from donors so they can continue to provide urgently-needed assistance to low- and middle-income countries. Such support is essential to preventing even higher levels of hunger and malnutrition, saving the lives of young children, and enabling countries to begin to recover from the economic devastation caused by the pandemic.

Supporting hungry people through international financial institutions

The new administration faces the largest increase in domestic and global hunger since the Great Recession as a result of the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 has revealed how tenuous and fragile the gains have been for low-income households in the United States. Hardest hit are communities of color and households with children.

Churches and other faith communities around the country are serving their neighbors through soup kitchens and food pantries. These services are critical, but they are not sustainable, nor do they reach all in need.

It is the role of the U.S. government to implement policies and programs and make systemic changes that promote equity and create opportunities for people to free themselves from hunger and to thrive, and we join with people of many faith traditions in urging elected leaders to make such changes.

Here are some recommendations Bread for the World supports, alongside partner organizations and faith traditions, and has shared with the Biden-Harris administration to complete during its first 100 days in office:

Lead a strong and equitable domestic COVID-19 response and recovery.

To save lives and to get people back to work, it is critical to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control. It is also critical to ensure that people do not go hungry as the country takes steps to deal with the health crisis.

Increase maximum SNAP benefits by 15 percent and increase the minimum monthly SNAP benefit from $16 to $30 for the duration of the recession, with designated funding for focused outreach to help close the SNAP participation gap for underserved communities.

Fully fund universal free school meals and Pandemic-EBT benefits for the duration of the recession.

Provide $100 billion in emergency rental assistance, impose moratoriums on evictions and utility shutoffs, and bolster funding for homeless and short-term disaster programs.

Extend Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Unemployment Compensation for the duration of the economic recession.

Invest $50 billion in childcare. Also, make the child and dependent care tax credit fully refundable and indexed to inflation.

Expand the earned income tax credit for adults without children at home and workers under the age of 25, similar to provisions in the Working Families Tax Relief Act.

Expand the child tax credit by making it fully refundable.

Lead a strong and equitable global COVID-19 response and recovery.

Due to COVID-19-related travel restrictions and the global economic and trade slowdown, many low- and middle-income countries are facing significant fiscal challenges. Many are struggling to meet the basic needs of their people and to service their international debt. The United States should:

Commit at least $20 billion in bilateral and multilateral assistance to prevent and treat COVID-19, support health systems, and mitigate the economic impacts of the pandemic, particularly hunger, malnutrition, and poverty.

Elevate the nutritional needs of women and children as a central component of U.S. global COVID-19 response strategies. In upcoming COVID supplemental bills, allocate no less than $500 million to global nutrition.

Support public and private debt cancellation for low- and middle-income countries, as the G-20 nations have called for. The United States should also approve a new issuance of IMF Special Drawing Rights to help developing countries access additional financing.

U.S. foreign policy relies on defense, diplomacy, and development and humanitarian assistance. Development and humanitarian assistance are significantly under-resourced despite the fact that U.S. investments in reducing hunger and malnutrition contribute significantly to making the world a better and safer place.

Raise the position of USAID Administrator to a cabinet-level position. USAID should have a voice equal to those of defense and diplomacy as components of U.S. foreign policy.

Quickly appoint qualified, principled individuals in leadership positions at development agencies, including USAID, the State Department, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the African Development Foundation, and the Inter-American Foundation.

Reinvest in multilateralism and restore principled U.S. leadership in multilateral agencies.

The United States cannot and should not take global action alone; strong multilateral partnerships are critical for sustainable and more equitable recovery from COVID-19 and economic growth and development.

Rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and make meaningful commitments.

Recommit to the Sustainable Development Goals as a guiding framework for U.S. development investments.

Work with Congress to fully fund multilateral development banks, which are on the front lines of supporting partner countries in their efforts to respond to and recover from the global pandemic and to achieve the SDGs. These include the World Bank’s International Development Association, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the African Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank.

First 100 Days: The call for increased multilateral assistance

Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation’s decisions makers to end hunger at home and abroad. Moved by God’s grace in Jesus Christ, we advocate for a world without hunger. We believe that everyone must play a part in ending hunger, especially the U.S. federal government. We work to change the policies and conditions that allow hunger to persist. Bread seeks long-term solutions to hunger and advocates on legislation that addresses the root causes of hunger.

International financial institutions (IFIs) or multilateral development banks (MDBs), so-called because they are funded by multiple countries and partners, provide financial assistance to developing countries to promote economic and social development. Congressional support is critical to U.S. financing for the MDBs: under U.S. law, Congress must enact legislation that allocates funding before the U.S. government is able to contribute. Congress also plays an oversight role in U.S. relationships with MDBs.

International Development Association
Part of the World Bank Group, the International Development Association (IDA) makes grants as well as loans on concessional terms (an interest rate of zero or a very low rate well below market rates) to the world’s 74 poorest countries. Overseen by 173 shareholder nations, IDA seeks to boost economic growth, reduce inequalities, and improve people’s living conditions. For shareholders that contribute financially, including the United States, IDA is an efficient channel for directing development assistance to the poorest countries. Because contributions to IDA are pooled with repayments from former and current IDA recipients, IDA is able to provide a substantial and stable source of funding that countries can rely on to help fund their development priorities.

U.S. pledge to IDA-20 (2022-2025): $3.5 billion

The African Development Fund (AfDF), part of the African Development Bank Group, supports its 38 regional member countries in their efforts to reduce poverty by spurring sustainable economic development and social progress. The AfDF provides grants as well as loans at highly concessional rates. AfDF-eligible countries include those that are on their way to becoming new emerging markets, as well as those that remain fragile and need special assistance to deliver basic services to their populations. 

U.S. pledge to AfDF-16 (2023-2025): $591 million

The Asian Development Fund (AsDF) provides grants to the Asian Development Bank’s 15 lower-income member countries to reduce poverty reduction and improve people’s quality of life. The grants support development projects and programs, including infrastructure, policy support and reform, production capacity, human development, environmentally sustainable investments, good governance, capacity building, and regional cooperation. Member countries of AsDF are eligible for grants if they have lower incomes, are considered to have a moderate or high risk of debt distress, and/or are small island economies. 

U.S. pledge to AsDF-13 (2021-2024): $174.4 million

International Fund for Agricultural Development	

In partnership with national governments, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) provides more than $1 billion in loans and grants annually to support programs and projects in rural areas. These programs enable and equip people to grow more food, improve their nutrition, better manage their natural resources, learn new skills, start small businesses, build strong community-centered organizations, and gain a voice in decisions that affect their lives. All IFAD projects are country-led and country-owned. Projects are designed in consultation with smallholder farmers and other residents of rural areas with a strong focus on the inclusion of marginalized groups. 

U.S. pledge to IFAD-12 (2022-2024): $129 million

This fact sheet is provided by the International Financial Institutions Working Group, a coalition of organizations committed to promoting effective US leadership in multilateral development institutions.

IFI Working Group Info Brief: Key IFI Appropriations Accounts

IFI Appropriations Accounts.docx.pdf

International financial institutions (IFIs) provide financial and technical assistance to lower-income nations to support economic growth and improve people’s living standards. Financial assistance may be in the form of grants or loans with zero or low interest rates.

IFI-Fact-Sheet-2022.pdf

With the support of their respective member countries, international financial institutions (IFIs) provide financial and technical assistance to lower-income countries to support economic growth and improve living standards. IFIs provide support through grants as well as through loans at favorable, below-market rates.

The IFIs are the largest source of international financing for many low- and middle-income countries, making these institutions key partners in national development agendas. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have mobilized unprecedented levels of financial resources to support countries in responding to the health and economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, including devastating worldwide surges in hunger and malnutrition.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, IFIs have mobilized unprecedented levels of financial resources to support countries in responding to the health and economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, including devastating worldwide surges in hunger and malnutrition.

Bread for the World

Contacts

Jordan Teague

Increasing IDA to Reduce Hunger