Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty Marks One Year of Action with New Country Partnerships and Expanded Global Support
Doha, Qatar — 3 November 2025. One year after its launch, the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty convened its First Leaders’ Meeting in Doha, marking a decisive shift from commitments to coordinated delivery. The meeting brought together over 350 delegates — including Heads of State, Ministers, and senior representatives of international organizations — to announce new country partnerships and renew global resolve to end hunger and poverty.
At the event, the governments of Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, and Zambia unveiled large-scale, multi-partner implementation plans targeting hunger, poverty, and climate resilience. These plans embody the Alliance’s Fast-Track Initiative — a structured process that helps governments lead with their own priorities, while international financial institutions, bilateral donors, and UN agencies align support behind them.
“We gather not simply to reflect on injustice — but to correct it with courage, ensuring a world where hunger and poverty are not managed, but made history,” said Ambassador Sheikh Mohammed Belal, Managing Director of the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC), addressing the Leaders’ Meeting. “For over three decades, the CFC has stood with those whose hands feed humanity yet too often go hungry — smallholders, women, and youth in rural communities. They are the frontline defenders of our shared future.”
Ambassador Belal highlighted the CFC’s innovative financing approach through the Agricultural Commodity Transformation (ACT) Fund, which commits USD 20 million in first-loss capital to mobilize investment in regenerative agriculture and climate-resilient livelihoods. He welcomed the recent participation of Invest International, calling it “a powerful step toward scale.”
In his remarks, Ambassador Belal also expressed appreciation for the United Kingdom and its Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) for their GBP 3 million Trust Fund dedicated to small enterprises in developing countries requiring less than USD 500,000 — a segment too often ignored because of perceived risk and high transaction costs. “This is leadership by example,” he said. “And we respectfully invite all donor countries to join in this spirit — even to out-compete one another in backing such small-ticket, high-impact investments, without which millions of promising enterprises in the Global South would remain unfunded and unseen.”
“We must move from charity to equity, from isolated projects to systems change,” Ambassador Belal continued. “Through the ACT Fund, we are humanizing the value chain — ensuring that dignity, labour, and value at origin are recognized, rewarded, and respected.”
The Global Alliance’s first year has seen tangible results:
• 200+ members, including over 100 countries and major international institutions
• Four national partnerships (Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Zambia) moving to implementation
• 85+ partnership offers across financing, knowledge, and technical assistance
• Two Seville Platform for Action initiatives to mobilize integrated finance for hunger, poverty, and climate action
Building on these achievements, the Alliance is preparing a Belém Declaration on Hunger, Poverty, and Climate Action, to be endorsed by Heads of State at COP30 in Brazil, underscoring the call for a just climate transition that protects the most vulnerable.
“Hunger is not fate, and poverty is not destiny,” Ambassador Belal said in closing. “They are failures of fairness — and fairness can be restored. Let our legacy be justice delivered — transaction by transaction, village by village, life by life.”
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