Nutrition International is proud to be supporting the African Development Bank (AfDB) in mainstreaming of nutrition into its portfolios and pipeline, which focus on the health, agriculture, WASH and social protection sectors. This is part of the operationalization of the AfDB’s Multi-sectoral Nutrition Action Plan launched in 2018.

Through this collaboration, Nutrition International has been implementing a nutrition monitoring and evaluation program for the AfDB, including a dashboard for results tracking and decision making. This work will continue to the end of 2019. In parallel, Nutrition International will help sensitize management across the AfDB to the importance of nutrition, and strengthen their nutrition capacity by delivering training focused on how to implement nutrition-smart interventions at a project level across AfDB sectors, and best practices for tracking and monitoring progress.

To kick off the training, the AfDB hosted a Regional Sensitization Event for West and Central Africa, inviting key nutrition partners and global actors. These guests spoke to AfDB staff about the importance of multisectoral approaches to nutrition, their successes in making progress across sectors, and how partnerships can advance this work across the African continent. Nutrition International provided the planning for this event.

The half-day sensitization session consisted of presentations and panel sessions on the nutrition situation in the region, and how nutrition is addressed in regional and national policies ― and in other development partners’ strategies. The presentations also emphasized the key linkages between gender and nutrition. Nutrition International’s Vice President of Strategy and Growth, Brian Harrigan, participated in a panel featuring case studies and success stories on multisectoral approaches for scaling up nutrition and shared Nutrition International’s vast experience in food fortification.

Nutrition International also led the production of capacity building training materials for AfDB staff, including a video-based nutrition campaign. These videos, which were shown for the first time at the event, covers areas such as: investing in nutrition to build Africa’s “grey matter infrastructure”; the AfDB’s commitment to nutrition; nutrition-smart investments in the agriculture sector; and capacity building for nutrition at the AfDB.

This event was followed by a regional workshop “Integrating Nutrition in AfDB Investments”. The workshop focused on topics such as integrating nutrition in the AfDB programming cycle, a situation analysis on the foundation for a nutrition-smart approach, introducing the AfDB monitoring and evaluation system, and quality assurance for nutrition integration in projects. Both the sensitization event and workshop took place in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, on June 24 and 25.

Through NTEAM, Nutrition International will continue to provide technical assistance to the AfDB through the generous support of the Banking on Nutrition Partnership and funding provided by Aliko Dangote Foundation and Big Win Philanthropy. Over Phase 2, Nutrition International will continue implementing a nutrition monitoring and evaluation system, will roll out the workshop to other regional offices of the AfDB, and will provide onsite technical support directly to AfDB project implementers.

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