This proposal aims to address the barriers and gaps by supporting the following activities:

1. Enhance the capacities of public and private sector actors such National Designated Authorities (NDAs), ministries and private sector actors to interact and partner with each other, strengthen multistakeholder engagement mechanisms, private sector strategies, and identify business opportunities aligned with agrifood priorities in NDCs and NAPs.
2. Support climate investment planning in agrifood systems in each participating country, including system-level analyses of climate priorities, financial gap assessments, resource mobilization plans, and matching investment needs with potential funding sources.
3. Develop high-quality project idea notes with private sector partners based on the identified agriculture and investment priorities outlined in the climate investment plans.
4. Facilitate knowledge exchange and matchmaking between countries, investors, and investees by developing common guidance and tools, fostering partnerships, capturing, and disseminating lessons learned, and leveraging existing agrifood and SME networks to facilitate connections between investors and investees.

This readiness grant will prepare country stakeholders to catalyze investments by leveraging the support of private investment platforms similar to the likes of the Co- Investment platform for Food Systems Transformation (CiP), established by the EAT Foundation, Citizen’s Climate International and the Good Food Finance Network. The platform aims to alter the scale and direction of food finance by bringing together various capital types and actors from multilateral, public-private, and philanthropic finance. Refer to Annex 3 for further details on CiP. The readiness support also builds on the private sector engagement approach under the UNDP-FAO SCALA programme that aims to expedite implementation of agriculture priorities specified within national climate plans of developing countries.