Achievements

Highlights of Key Achievements and Output of the Nutrition Division: 2013-2015.

The achievements of the Nutrition Value Chain for the period under review covered strategic consultations, participatory stakeholder’s sessions towards reaching shared understanding of key issues, the development of key strategies and plans, high profile nutrition advocacy, training and capacity building, ministerial endorsement for instutionalization of nutrition in FMARD through establishment of appropriate institutional structures, establishing the foundation for nutrition financing through creation of nutrition budget line, and forging partnerships for expanded resource base and scale while engaging multi-sectorally both nationally and internationally on critical nutrition and agriculture issues. 

Specifically, the key achievements are as follows: 

1. Early Roundtable Discussion on Building the Agriculture Nutrition Nexus in collaboration with Save the Children International in January 2014.
2. Initial scoping sessions held with stakeholders June- July 2014 to share initial ideas and engage stakeholders on agriculture and nutrition priorities in Nigeria. 
3. First national country led workshop in West Africa on mainstreaming nutrition into Agriculture held in August 2014 which had about 200 participants in attendance drawn from government and non-government organizations. 
4. A draft ATA Food Security and Nutrition Strategy was developed through several stakeholder sessions and subjected to formal reviews by key stakeholders.
5. A Strategic Plan for High Energy Nutritious Foods for Africa was developed with support from the BMGF, and endorsed by the Honourable Minister on the Mid-March 2015. 
6. Convened a High Level Policy Dialogue on Nutrition sensitive agriculture in Nigeria where the Honourable Minister; 
7. Directed the establishment of a full directorate of human nutrition with a mainline budget within the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
8. Endorsed the ATA Food Security and Nutrition Strategy and the Strategic Plan for the Transformative Partnership on High Energy Nutritious Foods for Africa and 
9. Inaugurated the Inter-ministerial Agriculture Nutrition Working Group. 
10. Featured an international panel on nutrition transformative agricultural policy in Nigeria. 
11. Coordinated and provided technical leadership for Nigeria’s Country delegation to the 2nd International Conference on Nutrition (CN2) in Rome, November, 2014 led by the Honourable Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.
12. Established Nutrition as a key Impact Domain for the overall Agricultural Transformation Agenda in the evolving Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation Framework for ATA. 
13. Resourced the ATA Economic Policy Working Group through a high level policy dialogue on nutrition sensitive agriculture, formal presentations towards nutrition transformative agricultural policies and high profile policy and technical briefs on making agriculture work for nutrition developed by the Global Panel for Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition and the SPRING Project. Contributed a chapter on food security and nutrition in the new Agricultural Policy being developed by the Economic Policy Working Group. 
14. Built in nutrition considerations and update into the First Year Review of the Nigeria Country Framework on the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition.
15. Realigned the Nutrition budget to support key elements of the ATA Food Security and Nutrition Strategy going forward. 
16. Providing technical support to the Potato Value Chain in FMARD and the CIP Country Manager on the conduct of a policy baseline assessment on Orange Flesh Sweet Potato in Nigeria. 
17. Developed a draft plan for the implementation of school feeding liked to local agriculture in Nigeria in partnership with the Partnership for Child Development.
18. Convened an Update Session with the Honourable Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development on Bio-fortification in Nigeria. This brought key partners of the Ministry working on bio-fortification together while strengthen the Ministry’s leadership role to drive the national bio-fortification agenda for accelerated improvement in the nutritional status of Nigerians.