National Information Platforms for Nutrition Review

2018
EC, Global

A Mokoro team led by Alta Fölscher conducted a mid-term review of the European Commission’s National Information Platforms for Nutrition (NIPN) initiative, assessing progress made to date in country NIPN implementation and the contribution made by the Global Support Facility to this progress.

The NIPN initiative was launched by the European Commission in 2015 and is also supported by the United Kingdom Department for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Its goal is to support countries that are part of the global Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement and are committed to deliver evidence-based programmes and interventions to improve human nutrition in their progress towards the 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”. The main objective of the NIPN initiative is to create country-led and country-owned NIPNs to strengthen countries’ analysis of nutrition information to better inform policies and programmes for improving nutrition.

During the inception phase the team attended a Technical Gathering on the NIPN initiative. Over 60 participants from the ten participating countries (Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kenya, Laos, Niger, Uganda, and Zambia), as well as donor representatives and technical advisors, were present at this conference which provided a great opportunity to interview key stakeholders from all ten countries at an early stage of the review process and observe discussions.

The mid-term review employed a formative, qualitative, theory-based mini-evaluation. The team conducted two in-depth country case studies in Bangladesh and Guatemala, including country visits and interviews with a range of stakeholders. In addition, desk reviews were done for the other eight countries, with further key stakeholder interviews via phone/Skype. Finally, an online survey across the ten countries was also conducted.

It is important to note that this mid-term review came at an early stage of NIPN implementation and therefore the review conclusions were largely about setting up the NIPNs. However, the team was able to offer some conclusions about likely programme success relative to the theory of change, based on early signals from the few countries that had progressed more significantly beyond contract signature.

The people behind the project

Project leader: Alta Fölscher

Principal Consultant

Principal Consultant

Stephen Turner