A Word from the Director

Dear friends,

Welcome to 2026. I wish I could report that the world decided to make our jobs easier this year. It hasn’t. Conflicts persist. Geopolitical uncertainties mount. Both domestic and development budgets remain under pressure. And while FAO’s latest report shows global hunger declining slightly, nearly 673 million people still faced hunger in 2024 — with progress deeply uneven and reversing in parts of Africa and Western Asia.

And yet—here we are, adding to the ranks. This month, four new partners join the Alliance’s Knowledge Pillar: the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Heifer International, BAIF Development Research Foundation, and Arigatou International. Each brings expertise the Alliance needs as it moves from planning to delivery.

This issue also introduces the new Support Mechanism team—a small group spread across Rome, Brasília, Addis Ababa, Bangkok and Washington DC, positioned to help countries and partners turn good plans into working programmes. You’ll hear more from them directly in the months ahead.

Three items on our near-term agenda deserve attention:

First, we are expanding support to additional countries, and transitioning from the initial handpicked countries to a fully demand-driven process. Several have already expressed interest; we expect to begin structured engagement in the coming weeks.

Second, we’re advancing work on integrated financing. When humanitarian, development, and climate finance flow into the same countries through different channels with different timelines and different conditions, it is difficult for countries to build lasting, impactful, integrated programs. The Alliance is exploring ways to help align these streams more effectively.

Third, we continue to build the Policy Basket—the Alliance’s repository of evidence-based programmes that countries can adapt and scale. This issue highlights three new examples which relate to the basket, including Zambia’s Social Cash Transfer Programme, which has provided unconditional transfers to the poorest households since 2003, and programmes in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia.

Looking back, it’s easy to list what the Alliance helped accomplish in 2025: the Belém Declaration on Hunger, Poverty and Human-Centered Climate Action, the start of country support via the Fast Track initiative, the commitments launched in the Seville Platform for Action, and the first country partnerships announced in Doha. But what matters now is whether those commitments become disbursements, whether plans become implementation, whether partnerships survive their first contact with bureaucratic reality. That’s the work of 2026.

Ahead lies a year of execution. The School Meals Accelerator—launched by Germany’s BMZ, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and WFP—aims to help governments reach an additional 100 million children with nutritious meals. The Belém Declaration’s signatories committed to measurable goals on social protection and climate-resilient food systems. The Alliance exists to help deliver on these commitments.

I won’t pretend the full path ahead is clear. It never is. But the direction is right, the coalition is growing, and energy is flowing. That’s enough to keep moving.

Here’s to a year of building.

Renato D. Godinho
Director, Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty
Support Mechanism

This national programme has been providing unconditional cash transfers to the poorest households of Zambia since 2003, with an income multiplier effect of 1 to 67 from 2010 to 2014.

This programme, which supports sustainable agriculture in rural areas through finance, mechanization, water harvesting and capacity building, has achieved 90% reduction in harvesting costs and supported about 17,000 jobs.