Explore Official Dialogue Feedback

One area of divergence occurred within the Dialogue over the extent to which priority in the Nigerian food system transformation should be given to issues of value chains and production, or whether the focus should be on mass scale nutrition education. Ultimately, participants seemed to agree that both were major issues and areas of intervention to promote sustainable food systems in Nigeria but the comparative importance of one or the other depended significantly on the context, for example North/South, rural/urban divides. It was deemed that in urban areas nutrition education could have a la... Read morerge positive impact whereas in rural areas potentially the focus needed to remain on production and value chains to ensure sufficient caloric access to food, before the focus migrated to dietary diversification and “healthier” diets. Read less

Challenges and Interventions The second discussion topic of the Dialogue centred around the challenges that exist in Nigeria’s transition to a sustainable food system and the interventions that can be introduced to support the transition. Participants agreed that the food system in Nigeria is fragile with serious output challenges in both primary and secondary production, which are further complicated by climate change, land use, greenhouse gas emissions, desertification, human conflict, and other factors. However, whilst all participants agreed that Nigeria has a long way to go in terms of ... Read moreefficiency of the food system and infrastructure (for example, the lack of roads in rural areas preventing farmers moving food to the market), there was extensive discussion on the areas and avenues of potential progress in Nigeria. An example of this is the change in aquaculture which is bringing significant opportunities for production and food consumption patterns, with benefits for food security. More specifically two distinct challenges were raised in Nigeria. The first highlighted area of intervention in Nigeria raised by participants focused on how much food people are eating. In certain areas of Nigeria, the focus needs to remain on increasing caloric intake as people are unlikely to focus on what they are eating and nutritious diverse consumption if they are not eating enough. In this regard, several potential interventions were raised by the participants. The first was an increase and repurpose of social protection programs both to ensure sufficient access to food but also to provide more nutrition knowledge and benefits. The second was programmes to increase consumption of biofortified crops at household level and encouraging households to produce nutrient dense crops which would have benefits both for dietary diversification and access to micronutrients. The third was an increase in agricultural research to improve the data on food systems in Nigeria so that interventions can be appropriately targeted, and funding effectively used. Currently, there are massive disparities in global funding and agricultural research with the primary focus being on grains, maize and soybean compared to fruits and vegetables. A further highlighted potential intervention in this regard is the increase in capital flows to SMEs that have innovative ideas in providing healthier and more sustainable food. The second area of intervention which participants raised as crucial to sustainable agricultural transformation in Nigeria centres around nutrition education and a focus on what types of food people are eating. Specifically, attention needs to paid to appropriate dietary education, tailored across different groups and with a focus on what is culturally and seasonably available. Whilst in part this is about increasing households’ assets and income so as to increase the affordability of nutritious foods, it is also about increasing the capacity of institutions which provide nutrition education. One potential area of innovation that was raised by participants was the role of institutional buying programs, such as prisons and schools, whose shift in food purchasing can cause value chains to react, leading to different availability of food for the institutions but also potentially for others in the local areas. Read less

Healthier diets The first discussion topic in the Dialogue centred around the conception of a “healthier” diet and dietary composition in Nigeria. The first issue that was raised was the complicated nature of Nigeria’s Food-Based Dietary Guidelines such that they cannot be easily communicated to people. Moreover, Nigeria is currently experiencing a triple burden of malnutrition (food insecurity, micronutrient malnutrition, overweight and obesity status rising). This has very significant costs, especially over time, as the rising malnutrition rates increase the need for healthcare to the ... Read morenon-communicable diseases (NCDs) which result from poor diet. Participants also highlighted the considerable issues regarding the design and implementation of nutrition policy due to the state/federal system. The federal level cannot force states to adopt a policy but effort has been made to call council level meetings which have the state organs present in order to encourage them to implement and domesticate nutrition policies at the state level, for example policies regarding nutrition-sensitive agriculture, cassava and orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. A further problem in implementation and policy design has arisen due to the siloed nature of thinking on nutrition, with it widely considered to be a health issue as opposed to an issue warranting a multisectoral approach. Therefore, in order to strengthen the concept of healthier diets in Nigeria coherence between state and federal policy needs to be made, as well as a concerted effort to embrace a multi-sector approach. Furthermore, whilst Nigeria is undoubtedly facing extensive challenges in policy design and implementation, there is also considerable diversity within the large, complex country exacerbating these problems. Specifically, the concept of healthier diets speaks more to the urban population who tend to experience a higher level of accessibility to food compared to the rural population whose problems often focus on a lack of access to food, as opposed to which types of food they are eating. Participants therefore raised concerns with the trend within the international community to move past caloric intake towards healthier diets, without addressing this massive ongoing issue of food shortages. Read less

One of the main areas of discussion in the Dialogue was the conception of a “healthier” diet, the current policy frameworks regarding nutrition in Nigeria and the challenges that exist with regard to their implementation. Here, the main finding was a need to enhance stronger interaction and coherence between State and federal policy creation and implementation for a concerted effort to embrace a multi-sector approach to nutrition. A second main finding was an agreement that whilst addressing malnutrition as a major issue facing Nigerians, the international community’s trend to move past ... Read morecaloric intake towards healthier diets represents a worrying trend which ignores massive issues regarding food availability. The second main area of discussion focuses on the interventions that could address the challenge of increasing availability of food (production-side interventions) and for the consumption of “healthier” diets. One of the main findings here was a need to increase agricultural research on the food system. Only with improved data on the food system can effective interventions be implemented to create a sustainable food system transformation in Nigeria. Other findings included an identification of the possibility of increasing social protection, the consumption of biofortified crops, and the delivery of nutrition education, especially when provided with consideration to cultural and seasonal variation. Read less

The Dialogue was an exploration of the nexus of food security, nutrition and climate change in Nigeria with a specific view to receiving inputs on reasonable steps towards a food system transition pathway to healthier diets in Nigeria. Specifically, the focus of the Dialogue was to receive inputs and feedback from stakeholders on proposed context-sensitive healthy diets, what they view to be the criteria and consideration for healthier diets and food system transformation, and the possible interventions and policies to achieve this based on their prior experience and opinion on potential opp... Read moreortunities.     Read less

The central area of divergence in the Dialogue was whether the key challenge facing food system transformation in Malawi is the lack of implementation or policy gaps. On the one hand, some stakeholders felt that there are a lot of policies and strategy plans in Malawi, but what is lacking is implementation and the translation of these policies into policy. Donors often focus their support on the production of policy documents and frameworks, but less on their implementation. From this perspective, what is lacking is the will and support to bring policies together to the extent that they are fu... Read morended and operationalised. Specifically, in Malawi, institutional and resource capacities are not necessarily the issue, but the lack of tools and funding to implement programmes. However, on the other hand some stakeholders felt that whilst there are implementation problems in Malawi, this does not negate the remaining challenges regarding policy frameworks and capacity challenges. Importantly, there is a need for consistency across ministries. There are often good policies but they are isolated and do not talk to each other, operating instead in silos. For example, there are nutrition education guidance strategic policies that indicate the importance of nutritional frontline workers but at the moment most people are volunteers who lack support. Such transformative policies need to be emphasised more both so that other policies align with their priorities but also so that more is invested into their implementation. The second issue of divergence was over the extent to which sustainability should be considered in the food systems transformation in Malawi. It was fairly unanimously expressed that sustainability is a concerning issue and investments should be directed towards this, but divergence occurred over the extent to which sustainability should be prioritised compared to other pressing issues, such as malnutrition and poverty. For example, it was questioned whether as emissions from Malawi are quite low compared to other countries, it was unfair to ask Malawi to grow its agricultural economy without increasing its emissions. However, other stakeholders felt that it was not a simple issue of emissions and GHGs. They felt that whilst emissions and GHGs are important issues, there are other issues of soil degradation and lack of water (especially at the end of the dry season) that must be considered. Importantly, production is context specific and different levels need to be considered, which is often understated in the dialogues. For example, solar-related community level technologies or the use of firewood offer innovative opportunities to addressing the nexus of food security, nutrition and climate change, but they require more articulation and awareness. In particular, the visibility of climate change issues in nutrition spaces is often very low. Ultimately, there is a need to better understand trade-offs between nutrition, equity, and climate outcomes at both the micro and macro level. Read less

With regard to the discussion regarding healthier diets, participants highlighted that nutrition education and greater policy frameworks are needed to promote the awareness, and utilisation, of the existing body of knowledge on nutritious foods and food safety. Even with increased production, education in terms of end products that can be created from the diversified crops is required. Currently, there is a lack of knowledge on the uses of certain nutritious crops. In this sense, progress towards healthier diets could be achieved by the sharing of recipes around the use of nutritious crops, su... Read morech as orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, to increase their consumption and utilisation. Alternatively, there are opportunities for increasing nutritional outcomes through the introduction dietary guidelines in school feeding or in improvements to the provision of food in boarding schools. Such curriculum changes would work towards addressing the nutritional challenges and stereotypes that emerge at an early age. However, it was raised that it is unclear how effective knowledge dissemination is in triggering behaviour changes, especially of ingrained actions and beliefs. A second intervention that emerged strongly from the Dialogue was the role of nutrition frontline workers. In this regard, it was considered that the provisions for frontline workers are available in Malawi, but implementation is lacking. Indeed, implementation challenges emerged strongly from the Dialogue as a key bottleneck for Malawian food system transformation as opposed to an absence of policy frameworks. However, on the other hand, additional policy frameworks are still needed on the taxation of unhealthy foods, so people find healthy foods affordable and better to access cost-wise. Finally, whilst Malawi has food groups, there is a need to establish creating Food-Based Dietary Guidelines and their consistent implementation across the government. Read less

One of the key issues that emerged from the discussions was the affordability and accessibility of nutritious foods in Malawi. Some participants noted the continued need for supply-side interventions, especially those with a focus on improving the production and preservation of foods. These would have nutritional benefits by covering seasonal gaps and covering micro-nutrient gaps. In particular, nutritional benefits have been observed from orange-fleshed sweet potatoes and biofortified foods such as pro-vitamin A maize and iron-fortified beans. However, there are several anticipated challenges... Read more to achieving increased production and diversification. For example, the increasing shift of the fertiliser subsidy programme towards increasing maize production, which although beneficial from a production perspective, is nutritionally problematic as relatively cheap staples increase compared to more nutritionally beneficial foods. To overcome these challenges, there is a need for incentives or financing mechanisms to create an enabling environment for start-ups and entrepreneurship which would encourage farmers to take risks and diversify their production, and potentially explore commercial productions. Other participants highlighted the fortification program in Malawi which was deemed to be fairly good. Alternatively, the key issue identified was whether it was affordable to the people that needed it. Here, subsidies or community level fortification were identified as actions that could be taken to make biofortified foods more accessible to the communities that require them. Read less

The main areas of discussion in the Dialogue were the role of interventions that diversify production and increase the production of nutritious foods, the need for an increase in nutrition education and educational awareness of healthier diets, and the role of policy frameworks and legislation in sustainable food system transformation. One of the main findings of the Dialogue was the need to explore the nexus of food security, nutrition and climate change in greater depth so that food system transformation and the policies to bring it about are cross-cutting and not considered in silos. Other ... Read morefindings included an identification of the need to start the process of constructing Food-Based Dietary Guidelines for Malawi which can be implemented consistently across the government, and an awareness of a lack of resources for implementation of existing policies and interventions that could bring about sustainable food system transformation. Specifically, in Malawi there are lots of policies and strategy plans, and a lot of support, especially from donors, focuses on the production of these documents, as opposed to their implementation. Focus needs to be given to the translation of these frameworks into policy. Read less

The Dialogue was an exploration of the nexus of food security, nutrition and climate change in Malawi with a specific view to receiving inputs on reasonable steps towards a food system transition pathway to healthier diets in Malawi. Specifically, the focus of the Dialogue was to receive inputs and feedback from stakeholders on proposed context-sensitive healthy diets, what they view to be the criteria and consideration for healthier diets and food system transformation, and the possible interventions and policies to achieve this based on their prior experience and opinion on potential opportu... Read morenities. Read less

There were no major areas of divergence in this Dialogue. A small area of divergence emerged with regard to the increasing proportion of Ethiopians who are consuming street food or food not produced at home. Whilst some stakeholders proposed this to be an important issue that needed attention, others held that eating out is still not a common feature of consumption for the majority of people and was instead linked to higher income, urban groups. It was agreed that this should be considered as an area of concern, but should not be prioritised compared to other food system challenges and interve... Read morentions. Read less

Dietary frameworks and policies A further discussion topic focussed on the application and relevance of dietary policy frameworks in Ethiopia, especially in light of the development of Ethiopia’s Food and Nutrition Strategy 2030 which contains a number of policy actions to consider in order to transition towards a more sustainable food system. Here, there were two important outcome points. The first point regarded a need to identify a method to observe and measure the implementation and adoption of these guidelines. For example, the Strategy proposes to ban the advertising of 'unhealthy' foo... Read moreds, which is a problem in the country at the moment, however it is unclear how this would be implemented and what kind of institutional changes would be needed to meet the requirements of this guideline. The second outcome of this discussion was an identification that a one size fits all conception of healthy diets is not applicable in Ethiopia. The actual diets of Ethiopians is both affected by culture, for example affected by Orthodox Christian beliefs and fasting periods, and highly resource-driven. It is one thing to recommend policies and interventions for food system transformation, but it is another whether it is feasible and plausible to achieve them. Therefore, there is a need to study communities individually and propose realistic, evidence-based solutions for them. This was further explored in the Dialogue with reference to the Ethiopian value chain; in particular, that the price of vegetables or fruits varies massively depending on the region and season in question which poses a significant accessibility limitation on healthy diets and the applicability of broad policy frameworks. Read less

One of the key areas of discussion of the Dialogue was the possible interventions that could be adopted to progress towards sustainable food system transformation in Ethiopia. One of the major issues that arose out of the Dialogue as hindering Ethiopians from having a healthy and nutritious diet was the affordability and accessibility of food items, with fruit and vegetables tending to be more costly than other food items. In consideration of this issue, two potential areas of intervention were raised; market development and integration so that production and seasonality are separate from cons... Read moreumption, and exploration into Public-Private-Partnerships, particularly as they relate to the growing and selling of nutrition food, which was deemed to be particularly relevant for Ethiopia as a net importer of food. However, in part this challenge is linked to issues of seasonality with certain types of foods, particularly fruits, only being available in certain time periods leading to variation in consumption. This is particularly an issue in rural areas where there is a lower prevalence of imported goods. Therefore, it was highlighted that alongside market development and integration, there is a need for supply-side interventions which boost the production of nutritious and diverse foods. In particular, interventions which scale up the production of wild fruits and plants such as spirulina, moringa and wild berries were mentioned due to their high nutritional value and contribution. Finally, linked to this is overarching need of rural development with many communities, especially in rural areas, lacking water sources, not only to grow the vegetables but also to cook the vegetables, and lack of sources of cooking energy. This elucidated how sustainable food systems transformation cannot occur by working in silos, or merely focusing on food security interventions, but must incorporate cross-cutting policies and adopt a multi-sector approach. Another major area of challenge and potential intervention that was raised by participants was the role of nutrition education as an entry point to try to address some of the key issues facing the Ethiopian food system. Here, it was noted that a key difficulty is ensuring that nutrition education is cost effective and is communicated to people in an easily comprehendible manner. Several policy interventions were raised as potential game-changing solutions to this problem. Many participants vocalised the possibility of increasing the number of educated nutrition professionals and targeting adolescents to maximise the likelihood of triggering behaviour change. This would overcome one of the key challenges in Ethiopia of the lack of skills to process, cook and preserve food. Alternatively, it was suggested that nutrition education should be more closely linked with the school feeding programs and university feeding programs, as in Ethiopia there is a large public university system which is boarding and so provides food. This offers a potential platform to provide healthier foods and increase nutritional awareness which can affect future consumption patterns and ultimately affect crop choices. A further proposed platform for nutrition education was linked to the Orthodox Christian beliefs and fasting periods. Currently, the fasting period is seen as a constraint to healthier diets, however Dialogue participants raised the possibility of using it is a platform to promote healthier diets. However, one of the key challenges identified in nutrition education campaigns is that implementation of development programs, especially those concerning nutrition, is often not as good as design. Participants used the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) to illustrate this as despite consciously trying to be nutrition sensitive, it often does not have any significant effect on nutrition outcomes. It was noted that often there is impact in terms of caloric availability and consumption, especially at the household level in terms of quality and diversity, but due to inadequate contact between mothers and health extension workers, there is limited impact on children’s diet and nutrition indicators. Read less

The main areas of discussion in the Dialogue were the role of interventions that diversify production and increase the production of nutritious foods, the need for an increase in nutrition education and educational awareness of healthier diets, and the role of policy frameworks and legislation in sustainable food system transformation. The overarching finding from the Dialogue was the need to consider policy interventions as a package rather than just sole programs. For example, supply side interventions to encourage the production of nutritious crops need to be accompanied by interventions wh... Read moreich encourage market development and integration in order to overcome issues of affordability and seasonality in Ethiopia. Similarly, the provision of seeds without nutrition education about how to grow and cook the produce will not be effective. Sustainable food system transformation therefore requires a package of interventions and a long-term horizon. This links to another of the main findings of the Dialogue; that nutrition education is an important step in any policy roadmap that attempts to progress towards sustainable food system transformation. There are many opportunities for this ranging from school curriculum and school feeding programs to the promotion of diverse dietary intakes during the Orthodox Christian fasting period. It is necessary to explore this area further to ensure that interventions are both cost-effective and have an impact beyond caloric increases. The final main finding of this Dialogue regards the adoption of policy frameworks. Whilst Ethiopia is adopting a Food and Nutrition Strategy 2030, trade-offs will be necessary between these ideal standards and what is feasible. Importantly, it is important to consider the regional and seasonal variations in Ethiopian diets, as well as the affordability of nutritious foods. It is there necessary to ensure that implemented interventions take account of diversity and are context specific. Read less

The Dialogue was an exploration of the nexus of food security, nutrition and climate change in Ethiopia with a specific view to receiving inputs on reasonable steps towards a food system transition pathway to healthier diets in Ethiopia. Specifically, the focus of the Dialogue was to receive inputs and feedback from stakeholders on proposed context-sensitive healthy diets, what they view to be the criteria and consideration for healthier diets and food system transformation, and the possible interventions and policies to achieve this based on their prior experience and opinion on potential opp... Read moreortunities. Read less

No areas of divergence