Feed the Future Meets 2009 L’Aquila Pledge

The 2009 G-8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy, was a pivotal moment for global efforts to reduce poverty, hunger and undernutrition. There, President Obama called on global leaders to reverse a decades-long decline in investment in agriculture and to “do business differently” by taking a comprehensive approach to ensuring food security, coordinating effectively, supporting country-owned processes and plans, engaging multilateral institutions in advancing efforts to promote food security worldwide, and delivering on sustained and accountable commitments. With these promises, the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative (AFSI) was launched.

In L’Aquila, President Obama announced the United States would invest at least $3.5 billion in global food security, laying the foundation for Feed the Future. This initial U.S. commitment helped to leverage more than $18 billion from other G-8 governments and donors.

December 2012 marks the end of AFSI’s three-year financial pledge period. At the second AFSI meeting of 2012 in Maputo, Mozambique, the United States announced that, thanks to Congressional support, it had met President Obama’s pledge by obligating more than $3.7 billion toward food security. Of this amount, the United States has disbursed over $1.1 billion.

In Mozambique, the United States also announced that AFSI donors have collectively met their commitment to mobilize more than $22 billion in global food security investments over three years. To date, the 13 AFSI donors have disbursed two-thirds of the $22 billion they pledged three yearsago, with more than half of the donors fully disbursing their individual AFSI pledges.

Read or listen to an interview with Feed the Future Deputy Coordinator for Diplomacy Jonathan Shrier on the progress and future of the L’Aquila Initiative.