This post originally appeared on Fanta Project. Reposted with permission.

In line with USAID’s Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy, FANTA has been working on multiple levels toward achieving USAID’s objective of scaling up effective, integrated nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions, programs, and systems in humanitarian and development contexts through a multisectoral approach. On a global level, FANTA has provided technical assistance and developed tools and methods to promote country-led, evidence-based, scalable multisectoral approaches that have improved nutrition and built sustainable capacity. Multisectoral Nutrition Programming outlines FANTA’s activities in the multisectoral arena in areas including:

Nutrition advocacy Development of multisectoral policies, action plans, and guidelines Nutrition costing and resource mobilization Analysis and use of nutrition gap data to strengthen agricultural linkages Multisectoral capacity building Multisectoral nutrition research M&E […]

This post originally appear on Locus. Reposted with permission.

Like so many places around the world, in Tajikistan, root causes of poverty are complex. As a post-Soviet country, decentralized public services and authority are still fairly new concepts, as is business and market development. A civil war in the 1990s left a devastating toll, and with Tajikistan’s mountainous, mostly rural landscape, remote communities have faced great challenges.

Nonetheless, Aga Khan Foundation has helped make marked progress in the 24 years we’ve worked here, in rural development, civil society, health and education. We began by filling critical gaps in infrastructure, local capacity and agricultural productivity, and establishing and strengthening community-based institutions, including village organizations, early-childhood development centers, pasture user groups, savings groups and economic associations. […]

This post originally appeared on Research for Evidence. Reposted with permission.

I recently participated in a salon on integrating governance and food security work to enhance development outcomes. Convened by the LOCUS coalition and FHI 360, the salon gathered experts in evaluation, governance and food security to review challenges and best practices for generating evidence and knowledge. A post-salon discussion recorded with Annette Brown and Joseph Sany speaks to the gaps in evidence and the need to more accurately measure how governance principles influence food security outcomes.

I came out of the salon conversation thinking that while there was a hunger for evidence, there are still large gaps and significant differences within the literature on things as basic as definitions. That being said, I wanted […]

Post-harvest food loss is a major contributor to hunger and under nutrition affecting farming families across Africa. Farmers who chose to participate in WFP’s Zero Food Loss Initiative have seen a drastic reduction in grain losses (from 40% to less than 2%), a tripling of incomes, and availability of food throughout the lean season. Simple, airtight technology paired with effective training has an immediate impact on farmers and their families, moving many from subsistence farming to surplus, where they become active market participants. There is also an impact on family health, as airtight storage and improved crop handling reduce the presence of aflatoxin molds, one of the leading causes of cancer in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now, smallholder farmers across Africa have a choice for a better […]