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

works are key instruments to lay down the physical and social infrastructure in and around
resettlement areas.
It is important to emphasis that the safety net programs are biased towards rural areas.
There is no place for the urban poor to be part of the beneficiaries of these programs. This
also has implications for the design and targeting of food security programs. Moreover,
nutrition is not a core component of the safety net programs.
In addition to the specific interventions of the safety net program that are handled by
the government, others are being implemented jointly with donors based on project formats.
USAID, EU, World Bank, WFP, FAO, UNICEF, and other bilateral and multi-lateral as well
as national and international NGOs do work on food security related activities. The USAID
and EU activities are predominantly contained within the safety net coalition’s approach.
Though WFP works closely with DPPC on the emergency side, they also work on
development-oriented activities mainly using the food-for-work approach. The FAO/BSF
Nutrition and Household Food Security project is being implemented in four woredas of the
Tigray and Amhara regions. The World Bank Food Security Project, which started in 2002,
has six broad components including funds to communities, community-based child growth
promotion, and food marketing studies. The last two have not been implemented as planned
due to institutional arrangement problems. Different NGOs in the different regions undertake
nutrition focused activities, although their coverage in terms of woredas is very limited.
3.6. The Food Security Strategy and Nutrition Gap
3.6.1. The ‘nutrition lens’ and insufficient nutrition criteria
In order to have a nutrition secure society, the FDRE and Regional governments in
Ethiopia should apply the Nutrition Lens (NL) in all their developmental activities including
investing in agriculture and food production. NL is best discussed in a recent NEPAD draft
document (2004). A nutrition lens applies nutrition criteria to review the potential impact (or
unintended impacts) of proposed investment projects, define optimal nutritional inputs from
each sector, and identify potential opportunities to integrate nutrition initiatives across
multiple sectors. Applying a NL process offers an opportunity to consider optimizing the
impact on population-wide nutrition problems, addressing the special needs of vulnerable
groups and maximizing the indispensable role of improved nutrition in achieving increased
growth and productivity among farmers and rural populations. Furthermore, NL as planning
tool enforces an awareness of nutritional problems, vulnerable populations, and the potential
impact of public investment on human development, productivity, and growth. It also assists
in integrating nutrition “best practices” in development programs, as well as in identifying
potential synergies to capitalize on cost efficiencies across programs.
Nutrition criteria applied to food security strategy and interventions maximizes the
positive impact of increased food production on the nutritional status of the people. In the
FSS, NCFS, and other related policy documents, the incorporation of such criteria is
negligible. As a result, even in those areas where major food security interventions were
undertaken, the incidence of malnutrition remains high. This gap has to be narrowed.
The nutrition lens should also be used in assessing donor activities, particularly their
food aid contributions, so that this aid not only serves to make Ethiopia food secure but also
nutrition secure. As Devereux (2000) says, ‘the primary concern of the donors is to prevent
famine, which reduces their food security strategy to a food aid strategy, and explains why
responding to annual food needs assessment dominates over multi-year planning and
programming.’ In this context, the issue of nutrition seems simplified by an assumption that
the food aid has a better nutrition mix than the food that is produced by the local people under
normal circumstances.
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