New study: Swiss development projects make a difference

The Global Food Report 2026 by the Alliance Sufosec shows that across 16 projects of the six Swiss organisations, the share of families who have to go entire days without food has fallen from 22% to 11% within a few years.

Since 2021, the Alliance Sufosec has been measuring how household food security is developing in its projects, using instruments of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The Alliance is supported scientifically by the University of Bern and ETH Zurich. More than 56,000 smallholder households have been surveyed since then.

The finding is clear. Compared with each project’s own baseline, food insecurity fell in 13 of 16 projects. Averaged across all 16 projects, it went down from 61% to 41%. In the Fabidji project area in Niger, it declined by 55 percentage points. The FAO reference value for Niger’s total population barely changed over the same period.

Hunger has not declined everywhere. In one project each in Chad, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire, food insecurity rose slightly despite agroecological work. There, development cooperation, peacebuilding and humanitarian aid must work in tandem.

The 2025 household survey measures the social dimension of agroecology for the first time. It is linked to food security about as closely as diversity in the fields. Households that farm diversely and organise into groups are around a quarter less likely to be affected by food insecurity than households that do neither.

Public funds act as a lever. In 2025, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) contributed CHF 12.8 million. With donations, foundation grants and the organisations’ own funds, the programme totalled CHF 45.5 million: one public franc becomes 3.6 francs. In the same year, the six organisations, together with around 300 local partner organisations, reached 1.2 million people in 28 countries.

Read the report

About the Alliance Sufosec
The Alliance Sufosec brings together six leading Swiss organisations in the fight against hunger: Fastenaktion, SWISSAID, Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Suisse, Vivamos, Aqua Alimenta and Skat Foundation. The organisations have been working together since 2020, with co-funding from the SDC.

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