About
Paving The Way For Data-Smart Agriculture
The 50x2030 Initiative is a 10-year, ~ US$500 million multi-agency partnership that seeks to bridge the agricultural data gap by transforming data systems in 50 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America by 2030. It is implemented through a unique partnership between the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). 50x2030 works directly with partner countries to promote data-smart agriculture to address food crises, climate vulnerabilities, improve rural livelihoods, create jobs and build resilience.
Most low-income and lower middle-income countries currently cannot produce three critical SDG2 indicators that should be collected through an agricultural survey
Bridging the Agricultural Data Gap
Each year, low- and lower-middle-income countries invest nearly US$500 billion in agriculture, often without good evidence to inform those investments. This leads to suboptimal outcomes, causing losses in productivity, shortfalls in agricultural income and, ultimately, more hunger and poverty. The scarcity of high-quality, regular and relevant agricultural data makes it extremely difficult for policymakers to make sound decisions to drive their country’s economic growth and reduce poverty.
50x2030 was developed to answer this need. The Initiative helps countries produce effective data and make it accessible and available to all stakeholders so they can build capacity to enable data-driven policies and decision-making. 50x2030 supports countries in addressing food security, sustainability and climate change by building stronger national agricultural data systems.
Financing
50x2030 has implemented a 70/30 financing strategy, where the Initiative is 70% financed by partner countries through the World Bank’s IDA/IBRD resources for data production. The remaining 30% is financed by donors and philanthropic organizations to enable the Initiative to provide much needed technical assistance for data production and use and promote evidence-informed agriculture.
The financing model puts emphasis on country commitment through increased investment in agricultural data. This supports sustainability since countries’ level of commitments are strengthened by credit, an investment by countries for data smart agriculture. Donors/development partners’ involvements and commitments are reinforced in this financing model because countries’ IDA/IBRD credits from the World Bank will need to be unlocked by donor contribution. IDA/IBRD allocation for statistics enables countries to finance the cost of data collection, and donor contribution enables 50x2030 to provide critical technical assistance for the design and implementation of surveys and build institutional capacity to make data-smart agriculture a reality.
To download a copy of our introductory brochureclick here