Mokoro was commissioned by UNICEF Zambia to conduct Zambia’s first-ever Nutrition Public Expenditure Review (NER). This landmark review aimed to assess the adequacy, efficiency, equity, effectiveness, and sustainability of public spending on nutrition to inform future resource mobilisation and budget allocation by the Government of Zambia and its development partners.

Applying the Lancet Framework, the NER developed a comprehensive taxonomy to classify nutrition-related expenditures. The team applied an expenditure weighting to estimate the budget share allocated to nutrition-relevant activities. This analysis encompassed the Government of Zambia’s expenditure data, along with both on-budget and off-budget donor expenditures, to assess the overall contributions from cooperating partners.

The NER found that Zambia’s funding levels fall short of government commitments and are insufficient to support basic interventions needed to reduce stunting and malnutrition. The NER therefore outlined two key recommendations: first, it advocates for increased nutrition-specific spending focused on children under five; second, it recommends better leveraging of existing nutrition-related funding by scaling up essential interventions and placing greater emphasis on equity, particularly given Zambia’s high levels of poverty and inequality.

The photograph illustrating this project was taken by Chris Boland and is published under the ‘Unsplash’ license.