An assessment of the causes of malnutrition in Ethiopia: A ...

FOREWORD
Although efforts were made several times since the mid-1980s to formulate a
National Nutrition Strategy (NNS) for Ethiopia , none was ever adopted by the national
government. Without a strategy and without institutional leadership to guide and coordinate
efforts to address malnutrition, isolated, piecemeal efforts across various programs resulted.
This situation created ambiguity in the objectives of such efforts and led to confusion among
various development partners. In late 2004, a new opportunity emerged for developing a
comprehensive approach to address malnutrition when the federal government agreed to put
in place such a strategy as part of the groundwork for the preparation of the second phase of
Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program, which is now called the Plan for
Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty - 2005/06-2009/10. At that time, the
Council of Ministers of the federal government gave the responsibility for coordinating
overall nutrition activities in the country to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development (MOARD), and established its initial task as being the development of an NNS.
Within MOARD, the Food Security Coordination Bureau (FSCB) was assigned the task of
formulating the strategy.
The FSCB established a national steering committee to draft the NNS in order that the
Strategy be submitted to the Council of Ministers for approval in the third quarter of 2005. In
addition to MOARD, the steering committee included government representatives from the
Ministry of Health (Family Health Department), the Ministry of Water Resources, the
Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, and the Disaster Prevention and
Preparedness Commission. Several representatives from Ethiopia’s development partners
also sat on the NNS steering committee – the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the
World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development, the European Union,
and the Canadian International Development Agency. Under the overall oversight of the head
of the FSCB, Berhane Gizaw, the steering committee was chaired by Beyene Haile. The
UNICEF representative to the committee, Iqbal Kabir, served as secretary.
MOARD approached UNICEF-Ethiopia to solicit technical assistance to facilitate the
development of the NSS, particularly through the provision of both local and international
experts to guide and contribute broader perspectives to the process. UNICEF agreed to do so
and requested the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to provide such
assistance and to coordinate the efforts of local experts in contributing to the formulation of
the NNS. In early May 2005, IFPRI research, Todd Benson, working with the assistance of
Urban Jonsson, senior UNICEF nutrition advisor, drew up terms of reference for the technical
assistance to the NNS steering committee. Drawing from the global conceptual framework of
the causes of child malnutrition (Figure 1.2), it was proposed that a team of local experts be
assembled to develop background documents on the basic and the three underlying causes of
malnutrition in Ethiopia. These background papers would then be used to develop a detailed
framework for the NNS itself. This document is a compilation of these background papers.
By early June 2005, eight local experts had been hired using resources provided by
UNICEF-Ethiopia. They were assigned the following topics and tasks:
• Solomon Bellete – the basic causes of malnutrition in Ethiopia.
• Demese Chanyalew – food insecurity as an underlying cause of malnutrition.
• Tefera Belachew – improper care as an underlying cause of malnutrition.
• Ayele Gebremariam, Abera Kumie, Damene Hailemariam, and Fikru Tesfaye – poor
health services and an unhygienic environment as underlying causes of malnutrition.
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