Achieving the first Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty and hunger through agriculture-led growth is central to the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). Improvements in agricultural production and productivity, and even in food security, do not automatically translate in improved nutritional outcomes, and can even have negative impacts on nutrition. As political commitment to nutrition is increasing, agriculture and food security interventions must be specifically designed to address nutrition problems. 

In order to maximize CAADP potential, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and African Union Commission (AUC) have launched in 2011 an initiative to strengthen capacity for addressing nutrition through the formulation and implementation of National Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans with the support of numerous partners including FAO, USAID, the Gates Foundation, EU, the World Bank, the Scaling-Up Nutrition Movement, the REACH partnership and relevant UN agencies, NGOs and academic institutions.

The specific objective of the Nutrition Capacity Development Initiative was to develop capacities of countries in integrating nutrition in their CAADP process, from design to implementation, and ensuring that enhanced-nutrition interventions were timely planned, budgeted and implemented as part of the National Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans (NAFSIPS).  

The process of the initiative, which engaged over 600 CAADP stakeholders from 50 countries and was supported by a steering committee chaired by NEPAD, included three steps for each of the region (West Africa, East and Central Africa and Southern Africa):

1. An intense preparation at country level : setting-up of a multi-sectoral and stakeholder country team, review of key policy documents, identification of case studies and preparation of a situation analysis summarized in a Nutrition Country Paper;

2. The participation in a 5-day regional workshop : each workshop offered a platform for policy dialogue to multi-sectoral country teams led by the CAADP focal points and composed of approximately 10 representatives of governments, development partners, private sector and civil society who received guidance and shared knowledge on integrating agriculture and nutrition and agreed on contextualised recommendations and sets of action for improving the impact of CAADP Investment plans on nutrition synthetized in a road-map.  

3. An immediate follow-up at country level: report back, sensitization of decision-makers, and initial implementation of the roadmaps.  

The main outputs of the workshop were:

• An increased knowledge by participants on how nutrition can be better integrated in agriculture (including livestock, fisheries, forestry, etc.)
• The development of contextualised roadmaps for 48 countries including specific recommendations on how nutrition can better be addressed through the CAADP investment plan objectives, targeting, implementation strategies, information, monitoring and evaluation systems, coordination mechanisms, capacity development strategies as well as costing of the plans.
• A strong commitment from CAADP focal points and country teams to follow-up on a set of tangible actions after the workshop, with support for implementation by technical and financial partners.

You can learn more on the lessons learnt here

Follow-up is now on-going at global, continental/regional and country level to make the most of this initiative and the phase II of the initiative has been launched early 2014. The overall objective is to support countries in integrating nutrition in their CAADP process, from design to implementation, and ensuring that nutrition interventions are planned, budgeted and implemented as a part of their NAFSIPs.

At Continental level, NEPAD and FAO are jointly facilitating a CAADP Nutrition task force of 35+ institutions (AU, NEPAD, RECs, UN agencies, NGOs, Universities, Donors) and country representatives (CAADP focal points, Farmer organizations, Civil Society mechanisms,…)

At country level, countries are at various stages of implementation of their CAADP Nutrition roadmap. In most of the countries, CAADP Investment Plans are now better integrating nutrition elements (see for example Benin, Cameroon, Ghana METASIP, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mozambique PNIA 2014-2018, Niger 3N Initiative, Rwanda PSTA3, Tanzania ASDP2, Togo, Zimbabwe, etc.). Innovative actions in terms of programming and capacity development have been implemented, as showed by the wide range of examples which were shared during the SUN country calls organised in June 2014 for 34 SUN-African countries.