The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) have jointly launched the Agrifood Systems Transformation Accelerator (ASTA), a global programme designed to help Least Developed Countries make their agrifood systems more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable by fostering partnerships and generating public-private investments
The launch took place during a bilateral meeting between FAO director-general, Qu Dongyu, and his UNIDO counterpart, Gerd Mueller, on the side lines of the Fifth UN Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in Doha, Qatar.
ASTA is the first centrepiece of a new collaboration between FAO and UNIDO and helps generate investment in the agrifood system of some of the world's poorest countries, including through development of value chains, market systems, business models and inclusive finance, in order to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
"ASTA identifies investment opportunities and helps channel those investments into food value chains. With such efforts, FAO and UNIDO are natural partners. Our expertise and efforts complement each other. I am very proud of our cooperation with FAO," Mueller said.
The launch of the programme comes at a time when agrifood systems are threatened under the pressure of the climate crisis, ongoing conflicts and war, as well as the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
ASTA identifies solutions in four ways: By breaking down silos through broad-based public-private collaborations; doing away with the traditional top-down support and placing the beneficiaries in the driving seat; embodying the ONE UN approach, whereby different UN organisations combine forces to assist countries in more synergistic ways; as well as a shift away from targeting individual SDG indicators.
Such a shift is especially relevant for LDCs, where multiple bottlenecks often hinder urgent change and where integrated solutions based on inter-ministerial and public-private sector collaborations are essential. Crucially, the programme helps countries move from broad recommendations and strategies to concrete implementation with measurable impacts.
The ASTA approach has been field-tested since 2018 in 15 countries across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Pacific and South America.
