This post is written by the USAID REFS Division for Policy and Strategy team. 

Welcome to Policy Month on Agrilinks sponsored by the Policy Division of the Bureau of Resilience, Environment and Food Security.

This month you will hear some remarkable stories of how Feed the Future is impacting people through changing policies and strengthening systems!

The U.S. Government’s Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS) Fiscal Year 2022-2026 for Feed the Future highlights how policy has the power to affect systemic change. Feed the Future positions the U.S. government to work hand-in-hand with partner governments and key stakeholders to ensure food systems sustain the Global Food Security Act’s focus on ending extreme poverty, hunger and malnutrition. The GFSS needs a strong and effective enabling environment to catalyze development at scale.

Feed the Future has a simple, easy-to-access framework for policy change and for creating an enabling environment for building resilience, agricultural transformation and economic development: a prioritized policy agenda, policy system institutional architecture and the principle of mutual accountability. To learn more about these three policy elements that underlie a constructive enabling environment, visit the new GFSS Policy Hub.

Over the course of this month, we’ll focus on several themes: policy concepts, institutional architecture and mutual accountability, trade and the business-enabling environment, natural resources management and water, and climate.

Thanks to the following partners for their dedicated work on these key issues that will be shared throughout the month:

• African Network of Agricultural Policy Research Institutes (ANAPRI).
• Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) Food Trade Coalition.
• AKADEMIYA2063.
• Feed the Future Policy LINK.
• Innovation Lab for Policy Research, Capacity and Influence (PRCI).
• International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
• USAID/Zambia Business Enabling Project (BEP).
• USAID Missions (e.g., Kenya and West Africa Regional).
• United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety for Food Security Partnership (FSFSP).

Finally, we want to hear from you! Please share your stories of policy systems change. We encourage you to submit your own stories to Agrilinks throughout this month to offer opportunities for shared learning in policy systems strengthening.