Making African agriculture and food systems work for nutrition: What has been done, and what needs to be done? [report]

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
2016 unpublished
Poor design of evaluations, which are seldom rigorous enough (in terms of sample size, valid comparison groups, and so on) to demonstrate impact (Ruel and Alderman 2013). Agricultural interventions are rarely designed to have impacts on nutrition, and evaluations are rarely empowered to detect such impacts. In 15 Nutrition-sensitive programs draw on complementary sectors such as agriculture, health, social protection, early child development, education, and water and sanitation to affect the
more » ... erlying determinants of nutrition, including poverty; food insecurity; and scarcity of access to adequate care resources and to health, water, and sanitation services. Key features that make programs in these sectors potentially nutrition sensitive are that they address crucial underlying determinants of nutrition, they are often implemented at large scale and can be effective at reaching poor populations who have high malnutrition rates, and they can be leveraged to serve as delivery platforms for nutrition-specific interventions (Ruel and Alderman 2013). 16 The "1,000-day window" refers to a crucial period (starting with a child's conception and continuing through nine months of pregnancy and the first two years of life) when nutrition is of critical importance for a child's developing brain and body, after which most growth and development deficits are largely irreversible.
doi:10.2499/9780896295933_05 fatcat:cgg3el5qkzhn3netrgd6nnibv4