1. Research Gaps in Food and Nutrition Security Across Africa
Richmond Aryeetey
University of Ghana School of Public Health

2. Key challenges of Food & Nutrition Security
Poor Quality Diets
3 Billion
Undernutrition: Africa & Asia
3-16% GDP loss
Nigeria ( )
3 – 6 million cases
Manage and Use existing evidence
Generate new evidence
(IFPRI, 2016; Global Panel, 2016)

3. Assumptions about research
Evidence
Better decisions

4. Broader evidence landscape
Case studies in Ghanaian context

5. Evidence landscape New Research (applied) generate manage translate
use
Existing research Data
& findings
New
Research
(applied)
Evidence
Synthesis
Utilization for Decision making
New research
(basic)
Strengthen quality
Formalize evidence use
Share evidence
Demand
Promote use of evidence

6. “Level of evidence” pyramid
GOLDEN STANDARD
For example P:
I:e.g. drug or a therapy, a screening questionnaire or a health improvement program, or an exposure. C:
O: For example, you may be interested in knowing whether an intervention has a health benefit or a service quality improvement, or whether an exposure results in mortality.

7. GAPS in EVIDENCE Landscape
Substantial duplication of research effort
Research not adequately linked with local priorities
Research was driven by external parties
Research and policy community not linked
Sustainable Nutrition Research for Africa in the Years to come (SUNRAY)
Lachat et al 2014, Holdsworth et al, 2014)

8. The Roles of Implementation Knowledge and Capacities (in the Implementation Spectrum)
Identifying nutrition problems, agenda-setting, commitment-building, and priority-setting at all levels
Coordination, alignment and collaboration in assessments, analytics, planning, implementation and evaluation
Monitoring, evaluating, learning, adapting, sustaining and/or terminating
Implementation
Capacities
Procedures,
Practices,
Policies
Accessing information on potential nutrition-specific interventions, nutrition sensitive actions, programs, policies, and implementation innovations
Initiating, managing and expanding implementation
Implementation
Knowledge
Portfolio
Evidence,
Information,
Guidelines,
Experience
Mobilizing human, financial and organizational resources
Adopting, adapting and designing actions and
innovations
Detailed implementation planning,
guidelines, commodities, training manuals, job aids..
Credit: David Pelletier

9. Food and Nutrition Research landscape in Ghana
Focus on undernutrition
Micronutrient deficiencies
Epidemiology of undernutrition focused on children
Limited attention to nutrition of women and adolescents
Emerging attention on over-nutrition
Focused on epidemiology of overweight/obesity
Limited evidence on diets, food environment & behaviors
Experiments testing interventions are rare
Emerging attention to nutrition sensitive research
Focused on social safety nets and nutrition-sensitive food security
Limited evidence on harnessing poverty alleviation programs to address nutrition

10. 1. Gaps identified in Nutrition Links Project
How can effective strategies in nutrition sensitive agriculture work in one setting but not in another?
Replicating success
What strategies are needed to promote inter-institutional planning and programming between health and agriculture?
Delivery mechanisms
Integration of data systems across Agriculture, health, nutrition, livelihoods?
Quality of routine data
Strenthening use
District Data systems

11. 2. Priority research gaps in Nutrition in Ghana
Behavioural issues
Understanding traditional diets
Socio-cultural influences on diet and nutrition
Social and behaviour change
Dynamics of complementary feeding
Implementation issues
Local context evidence for recommended actions
Implementation gaps
How social norms influence intervention uptake
Anemia (women and children), Stunting, iodine deficiency disorders, zinc deficiency and diarria

12. 3. Research Gaps relating to healthy diets in Ghana
Weak contextual evidence for developing food-based dietary guidelines
Food consumption behaviour
Portion sizes
Eating habits
Understanding of the food environment
Food access
Food composition
Drivers of food choice

13. 4. SUN Movement Nutrition Research Gaps
Nutrition capacity
Mapping capacity in nutrition
Building nutrition capacity in non-health sectors
Deploying nutrition training through community institutions eg banks
Nutrition sensitive interventions
How to make social protection programs work for nutrition
Promoting uptake and scale up of nutrition-sensitive solutions eg OFSP, ODF
Working together
Understanding best mechanisms for working together across sectors
How to build and sustain transformational leadership in multi-sectoral teams
Food and nutrition data systems to monitor progress

14. Conclusions There is need for attention to broader evidence pipeline
Leadership is needed at country level to manage food and nutrition security research across sectors
Need to recognize the contextual differences within countries and to focus attention on understanding subnational gaps in evidence