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

contains a recommendation to revitalize the training and placement of home economists to
cater for nutrition, caring, and home management affairs.
3.7.3.4. Nutrition centered training and equipment provision
Some key intervention areas are large-scale capacity building efforts in agricultural
extension, employment generation through safety net programs, and community involvement
in planning and implementing programs and projects geared towards the reduction of poverty
and food insecurity. Capacity building interventions via training, equipment provision, as well
as establishing infrastructure and facility that help to mitigate poverty, food insecurity, and
malnutrition requires deliberate efforts to discharge safety net activities in a planned and
coordinated manner. Training of extension staff and community members in a broad range of
issues inclusive of planning, technologies, effective use of different resources, management of
assets created, organizational and communication skills and performance based evaluation
tools, etc, will be instrumental to achieve the intended outcomes and objectives of the MDGs
through the NNS. Household focused social mobilization interventions are key instruments in
this regard. Past nature conservation and agricultural development efforts were prominently
focused on community asset building with insufficient emphasis on household development
programmes. The NNS has to focus on households through using effective targeting criteria
to cover children, women, and other members of a household.
Donors should support programs that lead to a nutrition security. They should seek
means to include nutrition in the safety net projects they support. The food aid they give must
have a nutrition component and be targeted. They should support capacity building of key
institutions that harmonize and coordinate nutrition-related food security programs in the
government and non-government sectors.
Over 250 woredas were affected by disaster or drought in recent years. Support
should be given to all actors involved in the safety net, disaster preparedness, and emergency
response activities, broadly within the NCFS initiative. The international community’s
contribution should be to assist in the short run to save human life, but ultimately to enable
Ethiopia to nourish itself and have a strong footing to sustainably reduce poverty and set itself
on a path towards prosperity. Ethiopia's industries, both agricultural and non-agricultural,
have to develop and generate income to ensure that the food and non-food needs of the
growing population are met.
3.7.3.5. Encourage fortification and investment in food processing
Making agricultural research programs nutrition oriented and encompassing a strong
component of food processing research is not a sufficient condition to enhance the dietary
diversity of rural farm households’ food consumption. Of course, it should not be only at the
research center level that food processing is considered. Food processing investments should
be encouraged particularly in rural parts of the country. The food processing investment
should take into account specific nutritional problems, such as micronutrient disorders, and
include quality control to ensure food safety at the community level.
Significant investment is required to expand milling and processing facilities and
related market infrastructure in rural Ethiopia, particularly to supply commercial
micronutrient-fortified foods in order to reduce the prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies.
Of course, financing food processing plants and rural market infrastructure may not be easy.
In this case, donor assistance is timely and highly needed to mitigate important constraining
factors particularly related to financia l and technical assistance. Local institutions such as
peasant associations, cooperatives, local governments, NGOs and others can support
investments in local mills and assist in generating consumer demand for local micronutrientfortified
products. In many parts of the country, particularly in the highlands, cereal-based
food consumption habits require an urgent expansion in fortification efforts, including the
establishment of community based fortification plants.
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