Mama Mercy is a local farmer who grows sweet potatoes and tomatoes. Though Mama Mercy sells these crops to others in open markets, her own child is malnourished and stunted because all she manages to feed her with is tuwo, a plain rice meal.
Many of the children in the community are stunted and wasting due to a poorly diversified diet that lacks adequate essential nutrients such as proteins, iron and Vitamin A.
Jennifer Pepple, busy and upwardly mobile banker, has to resume working after two months of maternity leave, but this causes her child to miss out on months of exclusive breastfeeding and cuddles from the first most important months of life.
After one year of struggling through the traffic, leaving home early before the child wakes, and returning home almost at bedtime, handing over a huge amount of time to caregivers, the child finally gets enrolled in school, and another cycle of poor feeding routines continues, as the mother has no time.
What do Mama Mercy and Jennifer Pepple have in common?
They represent the reality of two core groups of Nigerian mothers: One which can be described as the rural dweller and the other, the urban or semi-urban dweller. Both of them have something in common: Lack of time and knowledge to provide sufficient nutrition for their children from exclusive breastfeeding and complementary foods in their first 1000 days.
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Over 2.5 million Nigerian children have been reported to be malnourished, according to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2016 conducted by UNICEF and Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The World Bank 2016 report states that only 10 percent of Nigerian children of between six months to five years are fed based on the appropriate guide for Infant & Young Child Feeding (IYCF).
The report says that the rate of malnutrition among children and women in Nigeria has been on the increase, showing that 37 per cent of children representing over six million are malnourished; 43.6 per cent of estimated 40 million Nigerian children under age of five years (from estimated population of 197 million) are stunted, while 19.4 per cent of children in the South-West suffer same deficiency.
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is a Swiss Foundation and the UN World Food Program (WFP) funded organisation, with a presence in Nigeria and other countries.
A look at GAIN’s Large Scale Food Fortification Programme shows that since 2007, after the food fortification mandate by the Federal Government, GAIN supported the activities with grants and a Fortification Assessment Coverage Tool (FACT) to evaluate the impact of the food fortification programmes to reach as many Nigerians with staple foods that fortified with essential nutrients.
It also has provided a grant to the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) for Phase 2 of the project entitled, ‘Social Marketing, Capacity Building, Monitoring, Evaluation and Impact Assessment of Fortified Food’ which would run till year 2020.
With improved advocacy and policy implementation for fortified staple foods, women such as Mama Mercy are able to make informed nutritious food choices by using fortified staples and other available food crops around her to make nutritious foods for her malnourished children and family.
For Pepple, one of GAIN’s focal points is to advocate for workplace support to promote infant and maternal nutrition by providing nursing corners for young mothers and possible extension of maternity leave periods.
Other projects by GAIN in Nigeria include the Universal Salt Iodisation, strengthening the compliance of salt industries to salt iodisation, and the Home Fortification, which was launched during the National Maternal Newborn and Child Week, to reduce iron deficiency using micro nutrient powders.
In enforcing the fortification mandate, Osita Anthony Aboloma, director-general, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), while presenting a paper in Kano in September 2018, said it was incumbent upon the organisation to let the public know the dangers inherent in the consumption of unfortified products.
Aboloma maintained that awareness and nutrition education on food diversification and identification of fortified foods by families could go a long way in ensuring the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Goal 2 targeted at ending hunger in African nations by 2030.
The Scaling-Up Nutrition Business Network (SBN) is one of the initiatives of GAIN funded through the government of the Netherlands.
Amongst other activities, SBN canvasses for the membership from nutrition-based small, medium and large businesses, getting them to make commitments as one of their corporate goals to provide safe and affordable nutritious food solutions.
The commitments are in line with increasing better diet qualities, partnerships and frameworks such as creating more affordable food packs, creating awareness on exclusive breastfeeding, reducing post-harvest losses using technology and generally championing innovative ideas to provide safer and more nutritious foods.
In July 2018, a Nutrition Business Pitch Competition, otherwise called Nutripitch, was organised for SMEs working in the nutrition sector to pitch for investment and scaling up opportunities within Nigeria and Africa.
The pitch programme also involved investment-readiness trainings anchored by Fate Foundation, a Nigerian business growth NGO.
The entrepreneurs were trained on key growth areas such as marketing, corporate culture, and building sustainable business models that would position the enterprises to bridge the gap of knowledge and convenience in access to nutritious foods.
Olugbenga Ogunmoyela, a professor and senior technical advisor, GAIN, said that the training was necessary to equip the entrepreneurs manufacturing food-based products to become ‘nutripreneurs’. This meant that they needed to be equipped with the food safety and nutrition knowledge to enable them to tackle malnutrition with their business, while still generating income.
Adenike Adeyemi, executive director, Fate Foundation, noted that nutrition might not be tackled adequately if businesses providing the nutrition-based products and services were not empowered to scale. She mentioned that the training programme was coordinated under the NGO’s Scale-up Lab (Health).
Out of 450 outstanding entries, 21 SMEs were shortlisted from national pitch competitions in Nigeria, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia.
A final competition was held at the Nutrition Africa Investor Forum (NAIF), a high level forum attended by over 200 business leaders policy makers and prominent development campaigners focused on unlocking the business potential of small and medium enterprises working to improve the nutritional quality of the food system across Africa.
The pitch competition ended with five award winners who had outstanding solutions and growth track record to solve key nutrition issues.
The Grand Prize Award was won by Kennie-O Logistics, a solar-empowered cold chain logistics company owned by Ope Olanrewaju. Another Nigerian SME, Augustsecrets, a children’s food company, won the Graca Machel Gender Lens Award, amongst others.
Concurrently, there was a ‘Nutrition Deal Room’ for larger investment opportunities. Fokko Wientjes, vice president, Nutrition in Emerging Markets of Royal DSM, a purpose-led, global science-based company active in nutrition who participated in the initiative, reported.
Wientjes said that the companies featured in both the Pitch Competition and in the Nutrition Dealroom comprised part of GAIN’s pipeline of companies improving access to nutritious food. GAIN will be following up on these exciting investment opportunities as part of its New Nutritious Foods Financing Programme.
Speaking on the influence of the forum, Uduak Igbeka, Nigerian country lead for SBN, stated that the winners from Nigeria had gone through rigorous trainings on positioning their businesses for growth.
She said the training and experience would directly help them influence the nutrition sector with education and awareness, using technology to solve key nutrition problems such as post-harvest losses.
According to her, SBN would continue to bridge the gap between ensuring better government policies that would support businesses to fight malnutrition and food waste.
She admonished that advocating for adequate nutrition is everyone’s business.
Oluwatoyin Onigbanjo is the founder of Augustsecrets, A Nigerian complementary food and nutrition enterprise. She is also a Child Nutrition Advocate and Cookbook Author of the Augustsecrets Meal Plan Book.
Augustsecrets is a recipient of the Graca Machel Gender Lens Award and the Royal DSM Nutrition and Food Safety Award for their child nutrition advocacy and innovation.
