We support the EU global commitment to end hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition through a dedicated, reinforced science-policy interface and a fostered inter-policy dialogue.
This page is under construction.
This page makes visible how Team Europe, the EU institutions and EU Member States together, tackles gender inequalities in food systems in their external action through initiatives and programmes.
To avoid duplication, programmes already featured on the International Initiatives and Programmes page such as the JP GTA, the Spotlight Initiative, ACT to End Violence Against Women, Commit to Grow Equality, the Global Coalition 'Making Food Systems Work for Women and Girls', Global Food 50/50 and HER+, are not repeated here, even where they are EU-funded.
2021 - 2027
This programme, supported by the EU, Germany (BMZ) and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) provides seed grants, training, acceleration and follow-on growth funding for women-led businesses, many in agrifood and green value chains. First phase (2021-2023) supported 751 women-led green businesses; current phase adds value-chain integration and access to formal finance.
2025 - ongoing
Launched in 2025 by the European Investment Bank, the European Commission and Luxembourg, this Global Gateway initiative channels gender-lens investment into women-led businesses and women's financial inclusion, with a strong focus on agricultural value chains and resilience to food insecurity. It contributes to the EU Gender Action Plan III and the 2X Challenge.
(2018-2020)
This programme provided matching grants and finance to agri-enterprises that integrate smallholder farmers, applying a gender-transformative approach to women's access to and control over resources. The EU Delegation paired it with the Denmark-cofunded AgriBiz programme supporting rural women entrepreneurs.
2025 - 2026
This Team Europe facility provides loans to agricultural value-chain businesses in Zambia through local banks, with at least 30% earmarked for women-led businesses. An accompanying EIB advisory programme offers mentorship and market access support to close the gender finance gap for women agri-entrepreneurs. The March 2026 Boosting WomeninAg Pitch Night brought together a dynamic group of around 150 agri-entrepreneurs, innovators, financial sector representatives and industry experts.
2020 - 2026
This project is a collaborative effort by 17 partners in Europe and Africa, under the EU-African Union research partnership on food and nutrition security (FNSSA)and is funded by the European Union Horizon2020 programme. It runs Food System Labs in ten African cities to make urban food systems more sustainable and equitable, including dedicated research and action on women's empowerment and nutrition.
2019 - 2025
DeSIRA funded 68 research-for-development projects to make agriculture and food systems in partner countries more climate-resilient, with gender equality among its target Sustainable Development Goals. Several projects apply gender-responsive and gender-transformative approaches to smallholder innovation, such as SUSTLIVES on neglected crops in Burkina Faso and Niger.
This Zimbabwe country-level gender Team Europe Initiative by the EU, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the EIB jointly support women's social, political and economic empowerment in Zimbabwe, where most women work in agriculture.
2021 - ongoing
IYBA is a Team Europe Initiative and Global Gateway flagship bringing together the EU, ten Member States and European finance institutions to support early-stage businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a strong focus on women entrepreneurs. Agrifood is a major sector of supported enterprises, and the IYBA-labelled TERRA guarantee (Transforming and Empowering Resilient and Responsible Agribusiness) targets agribusiness specifically.
2019 - 2023
Enabel's DEFIA programme developed entrepreneurship in Benin's pineapple value chain with a dedicated women's economic empowerment track: business-skills training and land-access subsidies for around 674 women growers, and biometric ID cards helping 650 women producers access finance.
2020 - 2027
France's flagship feminist-diplomacy fund approved EUR 254 million in grants to over 1,400 feminist organisations in 75 countries between 2020 and 2024, and has been renewed to 2027. Its food-systems relevance runs through grantees working on rural women's rights, access to land and women's economic autonomy.
2020 - 2024
The ALFOP programme, financed by AFD, combined functional literacy with technical and financial training for women members of Chad's farmer organisations: 24 literacy centres, 2,100 women trained and 120 local women leaders strengthened within the farmer-organisation movement.
2014 - 2026
GIC id the Germany's largest agri-food programme and the flagship of the BMZ Special Initiative 'Transformation of Agricultural and Food Systems'. It promotes innovations in seeds, mechanisation, processing and producer organisation in 14 African countries, with a particular focus on women and young people.
2017 - 2022
ATVET4W, implemented by GIZ with the African Union Development Agency, was one of the first large bilateral programmes to apply explicitly gender-transformative approaches in agricultural vocational training, developing 38 value-chain training modules and training around 13,900 people in six African countries.
This BMZ global programme targets malnutrition among women of childbearing age and young children in twelve countries, most of them African. It explicitly promotes gender-transformative ways of working, such as couple-based nutrition counselling, engaging men and strengthening women's control over household income.
Irish Aid, IFAD and the Irish League of Credit Unions Foundation use credit unions and savings cooperatives to give rural women in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania access to savings and affordable loans, so they can invest in and diversify their agricultural livelihoods.
This programme of the Italian cooperation positions women in cooperatives, processing and decision-making across its Horn of Africa and Sahel agriculture portfolio, for example moringa production and processing in southern Ethiopia with 75% female participation and women-led micro-processing cooperatives.
The 2SCALE programme, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was Africa's largest incubator for inclusive agribusiness, building public-private partnerships in food value chains across ten countries with hard gender targets: half of its one million smallholder beneficiaries and half of the 15,000 supported businesses and producer organisations were to be women-led.
2014 - 2027
Sweden is the lead funder of the Joint –UN Programme on Rural Women’s Economic Empowerement, implemented by FAO, IFAD, WFP and UN Women, which combines climate-resilient agriculture training, women's access to resources and markets, and gender-transformative household methodologies that engage men and women together to shift norms. Its first phase reached around 80,000 rural women.
The COYWA programme is a partnership between AECID and the African Union Development Agency, and supports capacity building, socio-economic inclusion and entrepreneurship of African youth and women, including in agri-food value chains. It succeeds the Spain-NEPAD Fund for the Empowerment of African Women (2007-2023), whose 77 projects in 38 countries had a strong food security and rural livelihoods focus.
09 Aug 2024 | 07 Jul 2026
