Food systems are a critical component of sustaining improved nutrition in every country. Nigeria is committed to taking a food systems approach to increase the country’s ability to supply safe, nutritious food to its population, as can be seen by the country’s continued commitment to implementing food systems transformation pathways, which came out of the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit. However, national, state, and local stakeholders do not have adequate access to data on the state of the food system to make informed policy and programming decisions.

In collaboration with Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, USAID Advancing Nutrition is working to establish a comprehensive food systems data dashboard in Nigeria. The dashboard will capture and visualize key food systems data at the national and state levels, making it easier for decision makers to access all relevant data in one place. This responds directly to key informant interviews USAID Advancing Nutrition held in late 2022 to understand how decision makers involved in food and nutrition programming and policy development are accessing data, their trust in it, and how they use it to make decisions. The respondents noted that the Food Systems Dashboard will increase transparency around data and facilitate collaboration and synergy across sectors. In 2023, USAID Advancing Nutrition will work with local stakeholders, like members of State Committees for Food and Nutrition, representatives from ministries and departments, as well as local implementers to populate the dashboard, as well as train identified staff from both the federal and states’ Ministries of Agriculture on data collection, analysis, and management of the food systems dashboard command center.