Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Performance evidence

Overview

The 2024 MOPAN assessment finds that the deterioration of global food security conditions over the past five years and the growing urgency of global climate action have made FAO’s mandate more relevant than ever. In 2023, about 733 million people faced hunger, around 2.33 billion lacked access to adequate food, 282 million people in 59 countries faced acute food insecurity and over 2.8 billion could not afford a healthy diet. Developing countries have been hit by multiple new and overlapping crises, alongside longstanding structural challenges to food security. FAO is increasingly called upon to lead the response to these challenges, at global and national levels.

The MOPAN assessment concludes that FAO has retained its key strengths. It has a clear mandate as the UN’s lead agency on agricultural and food systems, solid core functions, strong partnerships and a commitment to strategic innovation. It is valued for its technical competence and its convening power. It has taken positive steps to address issues raised in previous MOPAN assessments, including by diversifying its resource partners and strengthening internal coherence.

FAO has tight constraints on its core budget, while its extra-budgetary voluntary contributions have grown significantly. The sharp increase in project funding at the country level, though a sign of the high demand for FAO’s work, has brought two challenges.

First, it stretches the capacity of FAO’s country offices. This makes it necessary to equip them with the right capacities to ensure solid, high-quality delivery and accountability. It also requires FAO to manage its human resources management in a more strategic and agile manner and to strengthen the performance of internal controls.

Second, the shift towards predominantly earmarked voluntary funding hampers FAO’s flexibility to allocate resources against its strategic objectives.

FAO is in the process of addressing these challenges. Solving them will call for close dialogue with Members. This, in turn, will require creating the preconditions and incentives for members to support a progressive transition towards more sustainable funding practices in support of core functions.

This MOPAN assessment aims to provide a platform for dialogue between FAO and its membership, highlighting strengths on which FAO can build and issues that merit enhanced engagement. The forthcoming report will provide the findings from the assessment, outlines FAO’s organisational journey, including issues that FAO – Secretariat and Members alike – may wish to consider for the future.

Performance rating summary

FAO organisational performance wheel 2024 — Organisational performance

Key findings

FAO’s mandate and its role as the UN’s lead technical agency on agricultural and food systems is increasingly relevant to global challenges.
FAO is strategically committed to and aligned with the 2030 Agenda, and its SDG data and knowledge products are appreciated by partners as a global public good.
The organisation is valued for its technical competence by member countries and partners alike. Its convening power around normative work is highly appreciated within global fora and member states.
FAO has successfully mobilised additional resources to respond to members’ growing needs, notably from multilateral, vertical funds and IFIs, and diversified its financial partners.
The organisation has continued to strengthen its internal oversight and control functions, its transparency and has modernised and streamlined core business processes.
FAO has a clear commitment, dedicated strategies and corporate capacity for working in partnerships, and has put in place mechanisms to ensure accountability to affected populations.

The sharp and significant increase of project funding at the country level requires equipping country offices with the right capacities to ensure solid, high-quality delivery and accountability. It also requires more strategic and agile human resources management and strengthened performance of internal controls.
To support important organisational reforms, FAO would benefit from investing in a dialogue with members to build the confidence required for a progressive transition in funding practices towards more flexible, programme-oriented forms of support.
More transparent budgeting and reporting, combined with a results system that defines FAO’s corporate outcomes and demonstrates the organisation’s plausible contribution to results, would provide powerful incentives for FAO’s Members to engage in such a dialogue.
Ensuring that its interventions have a sustainable effect requires FAO to give more consideration to how capacity development can support this and how it can cluster its fragmented interventions.
FAO needs to strengthen the application of its internal control systems, including Enterprise Risk Management. In its work to protect from sexual misconduct, ensuring ownership of this agenda at the decentralised levels will be a next important step.
To manage, oversee and steer the many and complex transformation efforts in which FAO is currently invested, in a holistic manner, the organisation would benefit from a dedicated change management team.