The Politics of Ending Malnutrition - Challenging Conversations with Decision Makers

In this episode (13), the N4D Directors reflect on the pod cast mini-series “Country-led… Rhetoric or Reality” during which N4D had conversations with nutrition leaders in three countries: Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Kenya and with two global leaders from the Scaling up Nutrition Movement. While our national nutrition leaders spoke positively about the SUN Movement and other global nutrition initiatives, there was also consensus around the pressing need for better longer-term aligned financing and tailored technical support. The N4D Directors also discuss emerging developments at the global level which might address these needs but don’t shy away from asking whether these developments are really enough to shift the dial to ensure that countries needs and priorities really are at the centre of global actions.Please join the debate! Credits: Recorded edited and published by: N4D & Nutriat.coTheme tune: Saraweto, used with kind permission of Just East of Jazz© N4D Group 2024

What was the original vision and approach of the Scaling up Nutrition (SUN) Movement when it started in 2010? Has the approach remained consistent over time? How should we judge success of nutrition actions and the SUN Movement? What are the risks to success? How do you implement a systems approach to nutrition in practice when departments and organisations tend to work in siloes? Should SUN Movement be open to higher as well as lower income countries? In this conversation with the N4D team David Nabarro addresses these questions and more. Please join the debate! Credits: Recorded edited and published by: N4D & Nutriat.coTheme tune: Saraweto, used with kind permission of Just East of Jazz© N4D Group 2024

Strengthening domestic resource mobilisation and donor coordination. Our guest: Gladys Mugambi, KenyaGladys is Head of the Directorate of Health Promotion and Education in Kenya's Ministry of Health and Co-Chair of the global SUN Movement Executive Committee. In this conversation, Gladys explains how different interventions within Kenya´s multisectoral approach has led to progress in relation to key national nutrition targets. She highlights on-going challenges including the need to increase domestics resource allocations, further strengthen coordination across sectors, and the need for a greater focus on the promotion of healthy diets.The critical role of civil society organisations in advocating for these and other constraints to be addressed is recognised. As with Sisay in the previous episode, Gladys identifies the need for international donors to further strengthen coordination between each other and with the Kenyan Government. She argues that the key priority for the global SUN Movement is to help countries to strengthen their capacities to mobilise the resources required. Please join the debate! Credits: Recorded edited and published by: N4D & Nutriat.coTheme tune: Saraweto, used with kind permission of Just East of Jazz© N4D Group 2024

Matching international support with domestic commitmentsOur guest: Dr. Sisay SinamoIn this episode, Dr Sisay describes how Ethiopia has managed to reduce rates of stunting and what needs to be done to accelerate progress in order to meet national nutrition targets. He highlights the importance of high level political leadership and accountability at national and sub-national levels. Dr Sisay calls on international partners to match domestic financial commitments and more strongly align their investments with country priorities. He argues that the strengthening of the national SUN Donor Network is vital for improving coordination between donors and with the Government. Please join the debate! Credits: Recorded edited and published by: N4D & Nutriat.coTheme tune: Saraweto, used with kind permission of Just East of Jazz© N4D Group 2024

The role of international actors in mobilising country led, multisectoral nutrition action. Our guest: Dr Said Shamsul Islam Shams, AfghanistanIn this episode, Dr Shams describes how international support helped promote country led, multisectoral and multistakeholder actions for nutrition in Afghanistan. He highlights the importance of sustaining and adapting this support to changing circumstances even in highly complex contexts such as Afghanistan. Whilst international financial and technical assistance are vital, sustained, country specific advocacy also plays a vital role. Credits: Recorded edited and published by: N4D & Nutriat.coTheme tune: Saraweto, used with kind permission of Just East of Jazz© N4D Group 2024

The N4D Team introduce the "Country Led - rhetoric or reality?" mini-series. In this episode, the N4D team introduce our new series ¨Country-led: rhetoric or reality?¨ in which we will be discussing with nutrition leaders from country and global levels how to make international support for country-led nutrition action more coherent and effective. It has been 15 years since the first Lancet nutrition series which concluded there was ¨an urgent need for new architecture and governance arrangements to address the highly fragmented and poorly led nutrition architecture¨. Have the coherence and effectiveness of international support to countries really increased over the last 15 years? What needs to be done now to increase the country level impact of the global nutrition architecture? With our guests, we aim to identify concrete recommendations, building on successes to date, for international support to better address country priorities and needs. Credits: Recorded edited and published by: N4D & Nutriat.coTheme tune: Saraweto, used with kind permission of Just East of Jazz© N4D Group 2024

In this episode (No. 6, part 3), N4D interview several country actors, about the National Information Platform for Nutrition (NIPN). N4D have been working closely with global and country actors over the past year as part of an evaluation of NIPN commissioned by GIZ-C4N. This innovative and highly successful programme which is currently implemented in 9 countries, is gathering momentum with the prospect of being adapted and adopted in other country contexts.In this podcast:We hear from Eldah Onsomu, Isabella Kiplagat and Mohamednur Duba in the Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) and James Gatungu and Samuel Kipruto from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) about the Kenya NIPFN platform. The positioning of NIPFN within these institutions, both which sit in the State Department for Planning, appears to be a pretty perfect fit. KIPPRA is mandated to provide policy guidance across all of Kenya’s ministries and to take policy research to impact whilst KNBS is mandated to generate and host quality data and its analysis. In a short period of time, not helped by the COVID-19 pandemic, Kenya NIPFN has made massive strides in country including its visually impressive dashboard, several influential policy briefs and the elaboration of a harmonised nutrition indicator framework to monitor progress of the Kenya Nutrition Action Plan (KNAP). The vision for NIPFN Kenya is even more impressive with plans to devolve NIPFN to 47 counties, and to produce county policy briefs which will feed into new County Nutrition Action Plans. There are also efforts being made to get the Treasury to include a nutrition code to help track government and development partner spend on nutrition and for these data to be used to update a finance study conducted a few years ago. We also get to hear a growing confidence within the NIPFN Team that the platform can be sustained should international development partner financing reduce or cease. Learn about our work and read our report about NIPN hereFurther reading:NIPFN Kenya PublicationsVisit:NIPN | GIZ  | KNBS | KIPRRAPlease join the debate! Credits: Recorded edited and published by: N4D & Nutriat.coTheme tune: Saraweto, used with kind permission of Just East of Jazz© N4D Group 2023

In this episode (No. 6, part 2), N4D interview several country actors, about the National Information Platform for Nutrition (NIPN). N4D have been working closely with global and country actors over the past year as part of an evaluation of NIPN commissioned by GIZ-C4N. This innovative and highly successful programme which is currently implemented in 9 countries, is gathering momentum with the prospect of being adapted and adopted in other country contexts. In this podcast:Niger: Balarabe, Mohammed and Mababou discuss how proud they are of the hard won achievements with implementing NIPN in Niger. Key amongst these has been the systematic collation and cleaning of complex data sets, the analysis of this data based on priority policy focussed questions including nutrition and climate change, gender disparities and food systems considerations. They also discuss the tough decisions they have had to take and enormous amount of collective effort to get NIPN to where it is now….as central to Niger’s efforts to monitor progress with tackling malnutrition.Ethiopia: Dr Aregash Samuel Hefebo from EPHI in Ethiopia explains why this Public Health Institute under the MoH is such a good fit for NIPN in terms of its role vis is a vis the National Food and Nutrition Strategy and the monitoring of this strategy’s implementation. She also describes the areas NIPN Ethiopia are excelling in like the posting of meta data sets on the NIPN dashboard in a country where the data sharing culture is weak as well as how NIPN plans to devolve to 6 regions where EPHI currently have offices.Learn about our work and read our report about NIPN hereVisit:NIPN | GIZ  | NIPN Niger | NIPN EthiopiaPlease join the debate! Credits: Recorded edited and published by: N4D & Nutriat.coTheme tune: Saraweto, used with kind permission of Just East of Jazz© N4D Group 2023