USAID Advancing Nutrition recognizes the importance of strengthening systems to improve food and nutrition security (FNS). In northern Ghana, we worked with government ministries, departments, and agencies, and other relevant partners at national, regional, and district levels, to strengthen systems for multi-sectoral nutrition planning, coordination, and financing.
At the national level, USAID Advancing Nutrition partnered with the country’s national planning body, the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), and the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to provide technical support to the decentralized nutrition planning and service delivery structures at the district level, to promote multi-sectoral nutrition planning, and to coordinate nutrition multi-sectoral activities. With the NDPC, we developed multi-sectoral nutrition planning guidelines for mainstreaming FNS into development plans. We also collaborated to revitalize and strengthen the Scaling Up Nutrition Cross Sectoral Planning Group (CSPG), which brings together actors from multiple sectors to share and discuss updates on nutrition-sensitive and -specific activities and review Ghana’s FNS performance.
Together we mobilized the CSPG to develop a policy matrix and results framework of the Food Systems Transformation and Nutrition Security component of Ghana’s Medium-Term National Development Policy Framework for 2022–2025. With the GHS, we revamped the National Nutrition Partners Coordination Committee, which meets regularly to provide a platform for collaboration and coordination among nutrition-specific health sector actors in the country to develop and implement programs.
At the district level, USAID Advancing Nutrition organized trainings and provided technical guidance to reinvigorate or establish district nutrition coordination committees (DNCCs) in 17 districts across northern Ghana. By helpingthe DNCCs advocate for the integration of FNS into the 2022–2025 medium-term development plans (MTDPs) the number of FNS activities included in the 17 MTDPs increased from 48 in 2018–2021 to 141. Budgetary allocation to FNS also increased from a total of GHS 45,795,000.00 in 2018–2021 to GHS 177,486,225.00 in the 2022–2025 MTDPs.