The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Hand-in-Hand / Hand-in-Hand Investment Forum for Southern Africa was held in Rome on 15 October 2025 under the theme “Accelerating Climate-Smart Investments and Trade Integration in Southern Africa’s Agri-food Systems “as part of the World Food Forum / FAO events which took place from 14-17 October 2025.
The Hand-in-Hand (HiH) Initiative is FAO and partners, including SADC, evidence-driven platform to convert country/regional agrifood plans into bankable investment cases and to match those cases with investors and development partners. The HiH Investment Forum in Rome is the annual global stage where countries/regions present their plans for financing and partnerships.
Both FAO and SADC Secretariat prepared a Southern Africa regional investment proposal that comprises a set of regional investment cases intended to mobilise finance and partnerships for the region. The Southern Africa portfolio seeks to align national plans with SADC/regional priorities and to bring forth bankable opportunities. The regional investment cases cover four priority areas: irrigation, mechanization, agro-processing, and trade integration. These sectors have been identified as having high potential to increase resilience, value addition and intra-regional trade. The four thematic investment cases were validated by SADC Member States at a regional HiHi workshop, held in Harare, in September 2025.
The SADC Secretariat delegation was led by the Directors of Food Agriculture and Natural Resources, Mr Domingos Gove, and Industrial Development, Mr Dhunraj Kassee; while the FAO Sub-regional Office for Southern Africa, Mr Patrice Talla represented FAO. The Forum was also attended by a cross section of participants including private sector, Development Finance Institutions, NGOs, and country delegations from the Southern African region (Angola, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) as well as SADC Embassies in Rome. Except for Madagascar all the SADC Member State delegations were led by their country’s Ministers of agriculture. Both Angola and Zambia presented national/regional investment plans and engaged investors and development banks.
The Southern Africa investment pitches are seeking over US$ 2.07 billion investment envelopes broken down as follows: (Irrigation (US$ 0.6 billion), mechanization (US$ 0.3 billion), Agro-processing (US$ 0.4), and Trade facilitation (US$ 0.8). The overall summary of the investment pitches shows an average internal rate of return of 20%, income increase per capita of US$223 a total potential coverage of 7.8 million direct beneficiaries and 42.4 million indirect beneficiaries.
The Southern Africa pitches stressed on the opportunity to transform agrifood systems through targeted investment, the need for climate-smart, resilient irrigation and mechanization, the scaling agro-processing to capture more value locally and strengthening trade corridors/aggregation to expand markets (SADC integration).
The next steps following the Forum include commitment follow-up dialogues between countries and interested investors/DFIs, formation of technical working groups to finalise project documentation and due diligence, and scheduling of regional follow-ups.
