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

actions, interventions, or issues the top three priorities to be addressed during the drafting of
the NSS are the following:
1) Improve institutional arrangements;
2) Advocacy and awareness to address the severe malnutrition of infants, children and
women, as well as to eliminate the food-bias; and
3) The need to plan together with communities and execute interventions through
community participation.
3.7.1. Institution (organization and relationship) related interventions/issues
3.7.1.1. Improve institutional arrangements
The challenge of building a nutrition-secure society can only be met through a multidimensional
and multi-institutional approach. This means that efforts and resources in all
sectors must be integrated through well-formulated and coordinated plans and programs.
Efforts to improve agricultural production to improve food security and, thereafter, nutrition
can be successful only to the extent that efforts in the sector can benefit from collaboration,
support, and parallel efforts in other sectors. These include the availability of trained and
skilled human resources, road and transport services, effective and timely health delivery
services, effective markets and remunerative prices, and effective linkages with agroindustries
and international markets.
In particular, Ethiopia needs a clear and comprehensive nutrition policy with a
supportive institutional framework for its implementation. For the successful formulation and
implementation of the Ethiopian NNS, there has to be clear political support, guaranteed
resource availability, good coordination, implementation capacity, and work ethic. To develop
programs and projects that fit into the NNS, a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional
approach is needed. Effective partnership should be in place between relevant ministries, as
well as among UN agencies, other bilateral and multilateral international organizations, as
well as domestic and international NGOs. Effective reduction of malnutrition requires action
across multiple sectors. The routine operations of government through sectorally specific
action are unlikely to lead to success in comprehensively eliminating malnutrition. Unlike
food security, nutrition security is the concern of many more institutions, sectors, and actors
than those typically found in the food sector.
Unless the institutional arrangements are clear, and the agency for coordinating is
well integrated with those implementing food, care, and health programs, with all being
systematically inter-linked, the country may have an NNS of high standard and large-scale
programs under the NNS that have wide coverage, but programs will prove to be poorly
targeted and not effective or even implementable. To avoid such problems, implementation
may be effective if a proper division of activity is made among different implementing
agencies under the umbrella of one coordinating body within the government. This body
should also include the participation of NGOs, and the private sector. The NGOs can cater for
small-scale activities, often contained at woreda or even at village level in close cooperation
with and jointly planned and executed technology promotion activities. Within the
government system the agriculture extension service providing ministry, which is MOARD,
has to work closely with other ministries, such as MOH, MOE, MoWR, MoLSA, MOFED
and authorities, such as the Ethiopian Quality and Standards Authority (EQSA). EQSA has to
strengthen its work with respect to regulating the nutrient content of processed food both
produced locally and imported. Food labeling and controls on supplements and additives and
processing shall be under strict scrutiny and surveillance.
During the regional consultative meetings, experts in the regions made it clear that in
order to sustainably reduce malnutrition in Ethiopia there is need for an agency that
64