Connecting the Dots: How Partnerships Can Accelerate Progress on Hunger and Healthy Diets

Andrea Galante reflects on why the next phase of progress against hunger and poverty depends not on generating more evidence, but on building the partnerships capable of turning what we already know into action at scale.

August 21, 2026.

As 2030 approaches, there is growing urgency around accelerating progress towards SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 2 (Zero Hunger). Acceleration alone, however, is not enough. We also need greater clarity about what success means.

For decades, global progress on hunger has been measured largely through dietary energy consumption: whether people have enough calories to eat. This distinction matters, particularly for children. A child can consume enough calories and still be denied the healthy diet they need to grow, learn, and thrive. If our definition of progress stops at calorie sufficiency, we risk overlooking one of the most important development challenges of our time.

A more complex picture of progress

Recent data offers both encouragement and caution. According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025, global hunger declined modestly, while 2.6 billion people still could not afford a healthy diet. Current projections suggest that approximately 510 to 520 million people may still be facing hunger in 2030, with nearly 60% of them living in Africa.

These figures reveal an important distinction. progress in reducing hunger does not necessarily mean that people can access or afford a healthy diet.

Affordability remains a defining barrier

The World Bank's Food Prices for Nutrition DataHub, estimates that the global average cost of a healthy diet reached US$4.46 per person per day in 2024. This followed a period of exceptionally high food price inflation, which peaked at around 30% in low-income countries in 2023.

This matters because food security is ultimately experienced not through global indicators, but through daily choices made by families navigating constrained budgets.

Making Children an Explicit Measure of Progress

Children’s nutrition outcomes provide critical evidence of whether progress against hunger is translating into better nutrition. In 2024, 150.2 million children under five were affected by stunting, 42.8 million by wasting, and 35.5 million by overweight. These figures remind us that reducing hunger alone is not enough.

Children must therefore be an explicit focus of how we define and measure progress. Their rights, needs, voices and outcomes should inform policy, financing and implementation, ensuring that proven solutions reach children consistently and at scale.

From evidence to action

During my time at FAO, I contributed to the early development of an approach to nutrition-sensitive value chains. My colleague and co-author Bin Liu continued advancing the work, now published by FAO as Developing Nutrition-Sensitive Value Chains – Guidelines for Practitioners. As Bin recently put it, the approach requires a "systems mind", a reminder that our frameworks evolve through evidence, experience, and collaboration.

School Meals are a powerful example of this systems thinking. The guidelines show how home-grown school feeding can connect children’s dietary needs with locally available nutritious foods, while public procurement creates predictable demand for smallholder farmers, linking nutrition, livelihoods, and more sustainable food systems.

This thinking can extend further. Initiatives such as The Rockefeller Foundation's Regenerative School Meals initiative, explore how school procurement can connect nutritious foods with regenerative agriculture, supporting soil health, biodiversity, and climate resilience.

But improving the availability of nutritious foods is only part of the equation. Are healthy diets also accessible and affordable to everyone?

Healthy Diets, Not Just Calories

This question is particularly urgent. In a recent conversation, Ana Maria Loboguerrero, Director of Adaptive and Equitable Food Systems at the Gates Foundation, highlighted a striking reality: around 2.7 billion people still cannot afford a healthy diet. It raises a fundamental question: if people can meet their calorie needs but cannot afford a healthy diet, what should progress towards ending hunger look like?

At World Vision, this question is central to the ENOUGH Campaign, which connects community evidence with advocacy, financing, policy engagement, and accountability. The challenge is not simply producing more food but ensuring that food systems make nutritious foods available and accessible, and healthy diets affordable, especially for children.

The consequences are reflected in everyday decisions made by families. As Siwakato Kena, a mother supported through World Vision's work in Zambia said:

Access to nutritious food for children becomes far more difficult when healthy options remain beyond a household's reach.

 Her experience reflects a reality shared by millions of parents: food insecurity is often not about whether food exists, but whether families can afford the foods their children need.

This is where partnerships matter

This is where SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) deserves greater attention. Too often viewed as an enabling goal rather than a development outcome in its own right, partnerships may be one of the most important accelerators available for achieving SDGs 1 and 2. Effective partnerships connect what too often remains separate: evidence and technical expertise, financing, political leadership, implementation capacity and community experience.

The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty offers an important opportunity to put this into practice. By connecting knowledge, financing and country-led action, the Alliance provides a platform for governments and partners to move from evidence and commitments towards implementation at scale.

A different measure of progress

As 2030 approaches, we can no longer afford for evidence, financing and implementation to operate on separate tracks. Partnerships can help us learn faster, connect better and scale what works.

The next phase of progress against hunger and poverty will depend not only on what we know, but on how effectively we work together to apply that knowledge. Success should therefore be measured not simply by declining hunger rates or tonnes of food produced; it should be measured by whether children and their families can access and afford healthy diets every day.

That shift in thinking matters because it changes what we prioritise, what we finance, and ultimately what we hold ourselves accountable for.

About the Author:

Andrea Galante is World Vision’s Senior Advisor, Coalitions and Emerging Global Partnerships. She has spent more than 30 years turning science into action working to end hunger and malnutrition across continents. Her career bridges academia, the United Nations, and global advocacy, making her one of the most versatile voices in food security and nutrition today. As a former Professor of Nutrition, she shaped the next generation of specialists. As President of the Brazilian Nutrition Association (ASBRAN) for eight years and a lead researcher for Brazil's landmark National School Feeding Programme (PNAE), she drove policy change at a national scale. Over 15 years with UN agencies took her work across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, building food systems and nutrition policies where they are needed most. Now at World Vision International, she channels that experience into strategic partnerships and global advocacy to end child hunger.