Announcements demonstrate early action in connection with a new Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty to be launched by the G20 Leader's Summit in Rio this week.

Rio de Janeiro, November 15, 2024. A group of governments, multilateral institutions, NGOs, and knowledge organizations recently committed to increase efforts and coordination to scale evidence-based socioeconomic inclusion programs in hopes of reaching an estimated 100 million people in poverty by 2030 of whom at least 50% women and girls. These new commitments aim to strengthen existing anti-poverty measures like social protection programs with complementary socioeconomic interventions such as coaching, microcredit, asset transfer and income-generating support, which contribute to economic growth, increased resilience, and ending extreme poverty.

The Governments of Brazil, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Africa are launching new programs or strengthening existing ones, while knowledge and funding partners are improving coordination and joint action. Among the measures announced are (a full list of the announcements is found at the end of this piece):

• Brazil’s launch of a new program aiming to promote social inclusion through quality employment or entrepreneurship for 6 million people in the Single Registry of poor families. 
• The Dominican Republic aims to support over 60% of the 1.5 million families participating in the Supérate Program in achieving measurable financial independence and long-term sustainability in their businesses or jobs over the next decade.
• Indonesia will develop and test a government-led socioeconomic inclusion program in six provinces accounting for roughly 42% of Indonesia’s total poverty rate.
• Kenya will expand its Economic Inclusion Program from a pilot of 5 to 25 counties in the country, targeting 50,000 households 
• Rwanda will put in place a nationwide program to combat extreme poverty through socioeconomic inclusion to enable 900,000 households to build sustainable livelihoods and long-term pathways out of extreme poverty by 2030. 
• South Africa will expand and improve socio-economic inclusion programs to link at least half of the number of registered beneficiaries of social protection to sustainable livelihoods opportunities by 2029 and reach at least 7 million people. 

The push for socioeconomic inclusion (sometimes known as the “Graduation” approach) comes ahead of the G20 Leader’s Summit in November 18, which will mark the launch of a Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty – an initiative put forward by the G20 under the Brazilian presidency aimed at accelerating progress towards the eradication of poverty and ‘zero hunger’. The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty´s Support Mechanism will assist in the follow-up of the announced commitments and in the coordination efforts.

“Kenya is committed to ending extreme poverty through strategic partnerships and proven programs. By collaborating with organizations like Village Enterprise and BOMA, we are scaling up the Graduation approach, a holistic model that empowers individuals and transforms communities. Together, we are creating lasting pathways out of poverty, ensuring economic security and well-being for all Kenyans”, said Joseph Motari, Principal Secretary, Social Protection and Senior Citizens, Government of Kenya, which is working to extend its successful pilot program to all provinces in the country.

The case for action. More than 700 million people live in extreme poverty, roughly 1 in every 10 people, with millions more expected to join them due to crises like climate change. Those furthest behind typically face multiple overlapping challenges including lack of income, malnutrition, and lack of access to basic services. Traditional, piecemeal approaches are often insufficient in addressing these multidimensional challenges. 

“Strong evidence and case studies point to the positive impact of socioeconomic inclusion programs that grant people access to assets, resources, services, and training to create sustainable livelihoods”, says Wellington Dias, Minister of Social Development and Assistance, Family, and Fight Against Hunger of Brazil, one of the coordinators of the G20 Task Force which, under the Brazilian Presidency, helped design and implement the Global Alliance. “These programs complement other approaches like cash transfers and other social protection benefits and can provide a boost to local economies and provide families with a sustained path out of poverty”.

Due to their multifaceted nature, however, large-scale implementation of such programs can be complex, and governments require preparation, lessons learning and exchange, and financial support. Today’s announcement from governments alongside finance and knowledge partners aims to provide an enabling environment for scaling-up these programs.

Alignment of finance and knowledge for greater impact. Putting forward a new, more structured way of working, the participants in this announcement will provide more consistent support to implementing governments by leveraging each other’s strengths. IFIs such as IFAD and the Interamerican Development Bank, joined by philanthropies such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are expanding funding for initial technical support to governments, which can be used to prepare and mobilize larger concessional and other lending operations through multilateral development banks. This can also be channeled through the World Bank-hosted Partnership for Economic Inclusion (PEI), whose grants can inform billions of dollars of World Bank investments in government-led economic inclusion programs.

To maximize impact, it is critical that the knowledge and finance reach the most vulnerable populations and are targeted to where investments are most needed. “To build strong rural economies we need to empower rural populations, and to invest in reliable infrastructure, and provide access to inclusive finance and the digital tools that connect rural communities to global markets”, says Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Sharing firsthand technical experience, evidence, and facilitating knowledge exchange will play a critical role in advancing government-led socioeconomic inclusion efforts. Non-profits such as BRAC, Fundacion Capital, FAO, IPA, IFAD, Village Enterprise, J-Pal and Leadership Collaborative to End Ultrapoverty offered to provide a range of expertise, insights, and knowledge to enhance coordinated support for government leadership and maximize impact. The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty´s Support Mechanism will assist in the follow-up of the announced commitments and in the coordination efforts.

“Every year, governments are committing significant resources to tackling poverty,” says Shameran Abed, Executive Director of BRAC’s international arm, which oversees activities in 13 countries beyond Bangladesh. “We are proud to partner with governments across Africa and Asia to deploy an evidence-backed approach to reduce poverty at scale and are grateful for the Government of Brazil’s leadership in bringing together key global actors to further advance such efforts through this initiative,” he continued.

Early action on many fronts. Today’s announcements form part of a series of “2030 Sprints”, a concentrated effort pushed by the Brazilian G20 Presidency to motivate early action and improved alignment from committed partners in the three pillars of the Global Alliance (national, knowledge, finance) for high-priority areas of its evidence-based “policy basket”, including school meals, cash transfers, socioeconomic inclusion programs, maternal and early childhood interventions, and water access for vulnerable communities.

“The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty is demonstrating its capacity for early action and concrete results even before its formal launch, by bringing together political will from governments and consistent support from finance and knowledge organizations,” says Minister Wellington Dias. “But this is just the beginning. More governments and partners are welcome to join in this effort in the months to come, as we need more scale and reach to fulfill our vision. This is a sprint, but we are here for the long run”.

The 2030 Sprint for Socioeconomic inclusion is being announced as part of the 2030 Sprints Announcements for the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, held today, as part of the 2030 Sprints Announcements for the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, held today, November 15, from 2 to 7pm at the auditorium in the Kobra Space in the G20 Social Summit in Rio, Plaza Mauá. The event is open to the press and a live transmission link can be found here.

SPECIFIC ANNOUNCEMENTS AND QUOTES BY 2030 SPRINT PARTICIPANTS

In addition to the above announcements, participants under the 2030 Sprint are today announcing the following actions help to lift 100 million more people out of poverty by 2030:

Countries announced specific national ambitions regarding implementation and development of socioeconomic inclusion programs:

Brazil: By 2030, Brazil´s new “Acredita Program” aims to promote social inclusion through quality employment or entrepreneurship for 6 million people registered in Single Registry. This requires additional funding of $200 million and technical support for professional training. “In Brazil, there are thousands of women who want to start their own businesses but do not have access to credit with affordable interest rates nor technical assistance. “Acredita Program” came to make these businesses viable. For example, seamstress Josiane Nascimento, who was a beneficiary of Bolsa Família Program, took microcredit to expand her sewing workshop and transform her small business into a clothing factory”, says Luiz Carlos Farias, Brazil’s National Secretary for Socioeconomic Inclusion.

Dominican Republic: aims to support over 60% of the 1.5 million families participating in the Supérate Program, helping them achieve measurable financial independence and long-term sustainability in their businesses or jobs over the next decade. Through this initiative, beneficiaries will receive comprehensive training, access to vital resources, and personalized support to improve employability and foster entrepreneurship, particularly among women, youth, and rural communities. “The initiative plans to involve 1,500 schools and the tourism sector in purchasing from thousands of family farmers”, explained Gloria Reyes, Director General of the Dominican Republic.

Indonesia: Indonesia’s National Development Planning Ministry (BAPPENAS) and local governments in six provinces – accounting for roughly 42% of Indonesia’s total poverty rate – are committed to develop and test a government-led socioeconomic inclusion (Graduation) model and integrate this multifaceted poverty alleviation approach into strategic development plans to achieve greater, more sustainable impact.

Kenya: pledges to go beyond current cash transfers to also expand its Economic Inclusion Program from a pilot of 5 to 25 counties in the country, targeting 50,000 households. The key objectives are increasing households’ capacity to benefit from skills, productive inputs, assets, finance, and economic opportunities; enhance an adaptive social protection intervention that build climate resilience communities; and promote shock responsive interventions through strengthening of early warning systems. An important component is on expanding the enhanced single registry which currently has data for over 5.7 million vulnerable households with estimated population of over 17 Million individuals assessed to be extremely poor through the Kenya National Bureau of Statistic. The ESR under the KFRSP will be transformed into a dynamic registry that covers up to 75% of population in the country that is poor and vulnerable and become the singular platform for identification, selection and enrolment of social protection beneficiaries for State and Non-State actors across a broad range of sectors implementing social protection interventions.

Rwanda:  is implementing a nationwide program to combat extreme poverty through socioeconomic inclusion to enable 900,000 households to build sustainable livelihoods and long-term pathways out of extreme poverty and is fostering coordination and alignment through a Secretariat for 12 ministries and dozens of development partners in a whole-of-government approach to reducing extreme poverty.

South Africa: commits to, by 2029, to have finalized implementation of a Framework on Linking Social Protection Beneficiaries to Sustainable Livelihoods. The over-arching objective of the Framework is to empower and strengthen the Income, Assets, Opportunities and Capabilities of vulnerable (poverty and hunger stricken) people to achieve sustainable livelihoods. This Framework is anchored on the Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) approach and will improve the country’s socio-economic programs to reach at least 7 million people registered and link at least half of the number of registered beneficiaries of social protection to sustainable livelihoods opportunities by 2029.

Finance and knowledge partners announced the following measures to help these and other countries scale-up socioeconomic inclusion programs:

The World Bank Group: aims to expand its reach to 500 million people by 2030 through adaptive social protection systems. Within these systems, economic inclusion programs will be instrumental in providing the extremely poor and vulnerable people with pathways to more sustainable, resilient livelihoods and enhanced job opportunities.

Inter-American Development Bank (IADB):  The IADB announces that, subject to its borrowing member countries’ demand and its Board’s approval, an estimated amount of USD 18.6 billion may be allocated from 2025 to 2030 to provide support to country-owned, country-led implementation of policies and programmes included in the Global Alliance’s reference basket, including socioeconomic inclusion programs,  to accelerate progress against poverty and hunger and the achievement of SDGs 1 and 2. The IADB will continue collaborating with AfDB and Brazil in seeking country contributors for the Special Drawing Rights (SDR)-denominated hybrid capital financing mechanism that would increase available financing for countries to implement policies from the Global Alliance reference basket, including socioeconomic inclusion programs.

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD): commits to working with members of the Alliance to empower disadvantaged rural populations to sustainably overcome poverty and hunger. It further commits to raise its ambition to strengthen the socio-economic inclusion of women and youth, ensuring that gender equality is mainstreamed in 100 per cent of its operations, while aiming to achieve transformative outcomes for gender equality and women’s empowerment in 35 per cent of new projects, and that 60 per cent of them are youth-sensitive. The Gender-Transformative Mechanism (GTM) hosted by IFAD and supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aims to empower, by 2030, more than 20 million rural people across 27 projects and 20 countries to achieve gender-transformative results in agriculture and strengthen climate resilience.

BRAC: will work alongside governments in Africa and Asia with high concentrations of poverty to scale evidence-backed socioeconomic inclusion measures (the Graduation approach), leveraging and building on existing poverty alleviation programs to enable 21 million more people to build pathways out of poverty by 2030. BRAC will also facilitate government-to-government knowledge exchange around such efforts to demonstrate the feasibility of scaling through government and advance individual and collective efforts to tackle poverty.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF): announced expanded funding of $2.3m to BRAC to support testing cost-effective adaptations to bring down the cost of impactful Ultra-Poor Graduation programs and scaling the program to additional LMICs, including Nigeria and Ethiopia, through integration in national governments’ social protection programs. “In partnership with BRAC, we are supporting efforts to increase women’s economic empowerment through the Graduation approach, backing a learning agenda which will inform and support government-led scale up of UPG programs projected to reach at least 1.5 million households in several low- and middle-income countries over the next five years. We are excited that the program aligns with the vision of the Global Alliance Against Poverty and Hunger launched by Brazil’s G20 Presidency, to support country-led, evidence-based initiatives that reduce poverty and hunger among the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations.”, said Archna Vyas, BGMF’s Director for Program Advocacy and Communications: Growth, Opportunity and Empowerment.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):  The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) aims to further enhance its commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment through active participation in the Global Alliance’s Socioeconomic Inclusion Sprints. Building on key initiatives such as the CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality, which FAO has committed to disseminating in 10 countries by 2026, and the Commit to Grow Equality initiative, which is estimated to positively influence up to 54 million women across agrifood systems by 2030, FAO will support the implementation of the Integrated Programme for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls. The programme promotes coordinated action across three key pillars — national, financial, and knowledge — with strong coordination and engagement with financial actors being crucial to its success. By promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment interventions, FAO and the Global Alliance aim to create a more equitable and sustainable future for all.

Fundación Capital: will offer technical assistance to Latin American governments committed to implementing government-led economic inclusion programs integrated into social protection systems. By partnering with governments, we aim to promote sustainable, gender-inclusive livelihoods for 1 million families by 2030, supporting them to rise out of extreme poverty.

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA): as a research and policy nonprofit with a long-term presence in 19 countries, IPA will work to support committed governments and NGOs to scale evidence-based socioeconomic policies and programs that address extreme poverty. As these programs scale, IPA will work to support governments and organizations to monitor these interventions and learn more about their efficacy. IPA will also serve as a knowledge resource for the Alliance, sharing existing research and creating new evidence to inform partners’ socioeconomic policies and programs.

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL): as  a global research center based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, J-Pal will collaborate with the Alliance and its Members to expand the number of partnerships focused on socioeconomic inclusion programs to new countries, also leveraging its 30 active embedded government labs and strategic partnerships to support efforts in countries like Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Mexico. J-PAL supports governments and other organizations in evaluating and scaling up evidence-based policies and programs and has vast experience supporting the scaling of Graduation programs across multiple countries. It will also serve as a knowledge resource for the Alliance, sharing existing research and creating new evidence to inform partners’ socioeconomic policies and programs.

The Leadership Collaborative to End Ultrapoverty: a consortium of INGOs, NGOs, researchers, socioeconomic inclusion (and Graduation) experts that will provide knowledge exchange between our members and Global Alliance partners on subjects including program design and implementation; monitoring, evaluation and learning; and best practices for effective partnerships. We will also serve as a technical assistance referral network to connect our members and Global Alliance partners to support their efforts for scale, evidence-building, innovation, and continuous improvement.

Village Enterprise: will partner with African governments to scale poverty graduation programs with the goal of enabling 20 million people to escape extreme poverty by 2030. It will provide technical assistance, help embed the graduation model into social protection systems, and drive locally led, sustainable poverty reduction efforts. To support this effort, we commit to working to catalyze $100 million in results-based funding for economic inclusion to ensure impact and cost-effectiveness at scale.

PRESS AND MEDIA CONTACTS:

Press inquiries should be sent to:

G20 Presidency – Brazil – Carlos Alberto Jr. – carlosalberto.jr@presidencia.gov.br

Brazil – Ministry of Social Development and Assistance, Family and Fight Against Hunger – imprensa@mds.gov.br  

Ministry of Labour and Social Protection. State Department for Social Protection and Senior Citizen Affairs of Kenya – ps@socialprotection.go.ke

UNICEF – Ereis@unicef.org

Fundación Capital – emilia.garro@fundacioncapital.org

Village Enterprise – bretts@villageenterprise.org

FAO United Nations – fernando.reyespantoja@fao.org

BRAC – courtney.calardo@brac.net

J-PAL Global / Massachusetts Institute of Technology – bvelho@povertyactionlab.org

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) – a.llerenavargas@ifad.org

Programa Superate Gobierno de la República Dominicana – l.luciano@superate.gob.do

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty

https://globalallianceagainsthungerandpoverty.org/

The Global Alliance was put forward by the G20 with the purpose of accelerating progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of eradicating hunger and poverty. The Alliance’s approach (set out in more detail in this fact sheet) focuses on supporting country-owned programs and evidence-based approaches through strengthened international cooperation and knowledge-sharing.