From trade to transformation: IDH and SNV partner to build systemic resilience

Across the globe, a sense of momentum is building among stakeholders working to strengthen the resilience of energy, water, and agri-food systems. This shared determination is driving innovation and partnerships, even in the face of climate shocks, rising costs, and shifting development and trade priorities.

With over 295 million people across 53 countries experiencing acute food insecurity in 2024, the need for scalable, lasting solutions is urgent. The challenges demand new and better forms of collaboration amongst development actors: working together across sectors and stakeholders can amplify impact, strengthen supply chains, and drive innovation and where, and for whom, it is most needed.  

It is against this backdrop that SNV and IDH have entered a new partnership, with a shared vision to align international sustainable development with the dynamics of global markets as complementary drivers of lasting change. 

The partnership is designed to work across agri-food, energy and water systems, where pressures converge and where collaborative, systemic approaches—bringing together governments, businesses, knowledge institutions, civil society—have the greatest potential for impact at scale. By aligning strategies and harnessing our respective organisations’ relationships and sharing knowledge, expertise and resources, we aim to both generate efficiencies and generate greater impacts, contributing to a stronger, more resilient agri-food system. This will result in partnerships with farmers and communities on the ground whilst making global supply chains resilient, generating jobs, adding value, and safeguarding the natural environment.  

Overlapping crises demand systemic responses

What happens on farms across the world is increasingly inseparable from what happens in boardrooms and supermarkets. The challenges facing our food systems go far beyond the climate crisis. They reflect how risk, value, and responsibility are shared, or not shared, across the entire value chain. Rising production costs, shifting trade regulations, and growing inequality are putting pressure on farmers and workers who cultivate, process, and transport our food. Many are questioning the future of their livelihoods. Consumers all over the world are also increasingly feeling the impact, from higher food prices to questions about the future availability of our daily cup of coffee. 

These challenges call for a new approach. Not fragmented initiatives, but collaboration at scale for structural change. The SNV and IDH partnership is based on a clear conviction: increased resilience requires inclusive approaches that draw on the strengths of development cooperation, market innovation and public-private collaboration.  

In this strategic partnership, IDH and SNV will combine their strengths to accelerate market transformation. IDH will develop and upscale new sustainable business models with market leaders, helping to expand them further by engaging other companies, investors, and policymakers. SNV will, complementing this, adapt and embed these models through its in-country expertise—ensuring that innovations are not only tested but also integrated into governance structures, market systems, and financing arrangements. Together, they turn innovation into lasting change, embedding new models in markets, finance, and governance to deliver long-term value for farmers, businesses, and consumers. 

The collaboration imperative

Nothing illustrates the synergies between trade and aid better than coffee. Worldwide, climate change, water scarcity, and stricter sustainability requirements threaten the production of affordable, quality coffee. For millions of smallholder farmers, this is a direct threat to their income; for companies and consumers, it’s about supply security. 

By collaborating with a range of private sector companies sourcing coffee from countries like Ethiopia, Vietnam, Uganda, and Rwanda, IDH and SNV, who are both working with coffee partners, aim through their partnership to scale sustainable farming practices, which lead to higher incomes for farmers, and more transparent supply chains. 

Examples like these illustrate the kind of approaches that the SNV–IDH partnership can scale—delivering practical outcomes on the ground and aligning with national priorities in the countries where we work.  

In doing so, the partnership will contribute to partner governments’ ambitions for more resilient, inclusive and sustainable systems, support the Dutch agro-food sector’s strategic plan to strengthen public-private collaboration and supply chain sustainability, and align with priorities such as the EU Global Gateway and new regulations on deforestation and sustainability reporting. For companies, it can provide practical models that turn compliance into long-term resilience and competitiveness.