Today, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Administrator and Feed the Future Coordinator Samantha Power announced that the United States government, working with Congress, has committed more than $80 million of new Feed the Future funds and supplemental resources to rapidly respond to impacts of recent droughts and the lingering macroeconomic shocks of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These funds through Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global hunger initiative, build on the more than $20 billion that the United States has committed in global emergency and development food security programming over the course of the Biden-Harris Administration.

Today’s new commitment of more than $80 million in USAID funding supports the Feed the Future Accelerator, an effort to deepen the U.S. government’s food security partnership and focus resources on three countries in Southern and Eastern Africa – Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia. These food security “accelerator” countries demonstrate both high need and high agricultural potential. These funds complement a diverse Feed the Future portfolio of $577 million, including over $497 million of ongoing U.S. investments in these three countries, plus more than $150 million in private sector investments. 

Under the Feed the Future Accelerator, U.S. investments will harness the region’s combination of fertile land, diverse farming systems, and reform-minded governments to support a regional breadbasket. This has the potential to stimulate inclusive, economic growth across borders while strengthening the resilience of producers and systems to endemic shocks and stresses. Recent research has demonstrated that increasing cereal yields by 25 percent in Eastern and Southern Africa could boost the value of agricultural production in the region by over $24 billion by 2030 and reduce hunger for 22 million people. In addition, investments in the Feed the Future Accelerator present an opportunity to leverage planned hard infrastructure developments in the Lobito Corridor to connect producers to new markets, increase regional food trade, and decrease travel time for agricultural products – reducing some of the $4 billion of food that is lost or wasted in Africa each year. 

A series of recent, unprecedented global shocks to the food system, coupled with conflict, have underscored the urgency of Feed the Future’s core mandate to build a more resilient global food system by concentrating investments in areas of agricultural potential amidst the many hunger hotspots around the world. The Accelerator funds – including $25 million of supplemental resources recently announced by Assistant to the Administrator Dina Esposito at the Africa Food Systems Forum (AFSF), which includes $5 million of supplemental resources announced by Deputy Administrator Isobel Coleman in June – allow Feed the Future to meet key challenges of the moment while delivering on the objectives of the U.S. Global Food Security Strategy.