A quick guide to the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development—what it is, what it is not, and how it brings donors together to align, learn, and strengthen the impact of investments in agrifood systems.
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What is it the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development (GDPRD)?
It is a partnership, advocacy and knowledge network of key donors working on agrifood systems and rural development.
Donors often work in parallel, sometimes duplicating efforts, sometimes leaving gaps, and not always learning from each other. The Platform was created to provide a trusted, informal, non-political and neutral space where like-minded donors can come together to align their approaches, share experience, and coordinate their efforts, so that investments in agrifood systems are more effective.
The Platform does not provide financing or funding. Its value lies in helping those who do fund to work better together.
What does the Platform do?
The Platform strengthens how donors work together in four main ways:
- Building a shared direction
It helps donors coordinate, harmonize and align their strategies and policies, around common priorities, such as agrifood systems transformation, with a view to increasing the overall impact of their efforts. - Influencing policies and approaches
By bringing donors together, it helps shape donor thinking, policies, and programming, encouraging more coherent and strategic investment. - Sharing knowledge and experience
It enables donors to learn from each other and share evidence, lessons, and practical insights. - Connecting people and institutions
It creates spaces for dialogue and collaboration, building relationships across institutions and thematic areas that enable innovation and joint action.
What does this look like in practice?
In practice, the Platform combines dialogue with practical knowledge.
It organizes donor roundtables, webinars, and annual meetings where members exchange views and align priorities. It helps to inform decision-making through policy papers, stocktaking reports and other policy products that synthesize evidence and experience. It also runs thematic working groups on key issues such as sustainable finance, rural youth employment, land governance, and pathways towards SDG 2.
These activities help translate coordination into more informed and better-aligned action.
What the Platform is not:
The Platform is not a funding agency, and it does not replace national development strategies or donor accountability processes.
Instead, it complements them, by helping donors coordinate, learn and act more strategically.
How does it work?
The Platform is governed by a Board made of major donor institutions, which guide its priorities and work plans.
It is led by two Co-Chairs, elected for two-year terms. For 2026-2027, the Co-Chairs are Leonard Mizzi from the European Commission and Thijs Woudstra from the Netherlands.
Current Board members include the Gates Foundation, the European Commission, France, Germany, IFAD, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The Secretariat supports the Platform’s day-to-day work and implementation of its programme. Since 2020, it has been hosted by IFAD in Rome.
How did the Platform become what we see today?
The Platform was created in 2003 during Rural Week in Washington, D.C., by a group of major development actors who recognized the need for stronger donor coordination in rural development (the World Bank, BMZ (Germany), FAO, CIDA (former Canadian International Development Agency), the Netherlands, and IFAD).
Over time, it has evolved in response to global challenges. In 2020, the Secretariat moved from GIZ (Germany) to IFAD. Between 2021 and 2025, its focus expanded from agriculture to food systems, reflecting the growing complexities of global food challenges.
In 2024, the Platform marked its 20th anniversary. And in 2026, it adopted a new strategy for 2026-2030, designed to remain flexible and responsive in a rapidly changing environment.
Why the Platform matters now?
Today’s food systems challenges are increasingly interconnected. Hunger, rural poverty, climate change, fragility and economic shocks are no longer separate issues.
At the same time, development resources are under pressure with geopolitical complexity increasing. The need for effective, well-coordinated investment is greater than ever.
In this context, the Platform is uniquely positioned to:
- Support donor alignment on financing sustainable food systems, including innovative blended finance approaches.
- Help shape global discussions on rural livelihoods across climate, conflict, economic uncertainty.
- Help support more effective coordination in donor responses to crises, strengthening resilient rural economies.
The Donor Platform and IFAD
IFAD is a Platform Board member as well as the host of its Secretariat in Rome. This unique arrangement mutually strengthens engagement with a broad donor network while maintaining the Platform’s independence.
In short
The Platform helps donors move from working in parallel to working in a more aligned, strategic, and effective way, so they can have greater impact on food systems and rural development.
Get to know the Secretariat team.
