ADDIS ABABA - March 08, 2024 (NIPN) - Coordinator at Capacity for Nutrition (C4N) with the Global National Information Platform for Nutrition (NIPN), Laura Barrington, lauded NIPN-Ethiopia’s achievements in advancing progress against all forms of malnutrition. Laura said that the NIPN Global Coordination Unit in Brussels “is very enthusiastic about NIPN-Ethiopia’s achievements”.
The coordinator said after winding up her visit to the NIPN-Ethiopia Office in Addis Ababa last Tuesday that NIPN-Ethiopia has produced evidence that is strong enough to have an impact on national nutrition policy. Laura appreciated the analytical output of NIPN-Ethiopia on the "Impact of the scale-up of the Seqota Declaration (SD) on stunting aversion: Analysis using the Lives Saved Tool (LiST) approach," which was requested by the Ethiopian Ministry of Health (MoH). “The findings were presented in high level meetings and covered in various newspapers and channels. NIPN analysis using LiST on the scale and coverage of interventions was helpful in generating and allocating resources from the government,” she said.
Laura, along with Dr. Archana Sarkar, GIZ Advisor, NIPN-Ethiopia, has taken the opportunity to hold discussions with senior officials of the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI), including the Institute Director General, Dr. Mesay Hailu; Deputy Director General, Dr. Getachew Tollera; Director of Food Science and Nutrition Research Directorate, Dr. Masresha Tessema; and NIPN-Ethiopia Coordinator, Dr. Aregash Samuel. The focus of the discussion was on the achievements of NIPN-Ethiopia this year. The achievements include, among others, the initiatives taken by NIPN-Ethiopia to cascade its activities to selected regional public health institutes.
“We have discussed the inception workshop and the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with the Amhara Regional Public Health Institute (APHI), the progress the platform is making in adding additional datasets to the NIPN Data repository, and their plan to link the NIPN data to the National Data Management Centre,” Laura said.
Laura said that the discussion further touched on the future of the NIPN platform and the importance of the NIPN Sustainability Plan to ensure the technical, institutional, and financial sustainability of NIPN within EPHI. The idea of establishing Regional NIPN hub in Ethiopia was also high on the discussion.
Laura has also had a separate discussion with the Director of the Food Science and Nutrition Research Directorate, Dr. Masresha Tessema, and the Coordinator of NIPN-Ethiopia, Dr. Aregash Samuel. Here, they were able to discuss in detail the achievements of NIPN-Ethiopia in 2023. “We also discussed in more detail the no-cost extension GIZ has been able to provide for our financing agreement, which will extend the implementation period to the end of November 2025. The additional months of implementation will require a review of the operational plan and budget,” she said.
Asked if there was any initiative taken by NIPN-Global in supporting the initiatives taken to cascade NIPN-Ethiopia’s activities to regional public health institutes (RPHI), Laura said that NIPN Global Coordination “is facilitating a recurring peer-to-peer dialogue between these platforms to support their mutual learning from each other’s experience with rolling out NIPN to the sub-national level”. With regard to cascading activities to RPHIs, Laura said that NIPN Ethiopia is indeed one of the pioneers within the NIPN initiative, together with Laos and Kenya.
Laura has also met with colleagues at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) that provide technical support to NIPN-Ethiopia, with the NIPN program manager at the EU Delegation, and with the team leads of the Transformation of Agri-Food Systems section and Social Transformation Cluster at GIZ.
Laura Barrington is responsible for coordinating the Global Coordination Unit in Brussels and the support GIZ provides to three of the NIPN platforms in Ethiopia, Niger, and Zambia.
C4N is a joint action of the European Commission (EC) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is implemented by GIZ, according to the coordinator, Laura. The C4N coordinator further said that in the first phase of NIPN, the British Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supported NIPN together with the EC.
NIPN-Ethiopia Coordinator, Dr. Aregash Samuel, said on her part that the discussion she had with the Coordinator at C4N-NIPN-Global was productive. “We appreciate the encouraging feedback and support of Laura and her team. This nudges us, the NIPN-Ethiopia team, to move ahead in meeting our objectives. I would like to seize this opportunity to extend my appreciation, on behalf of my team, to Laura and NIPN-Global and donor organizations for their invaluable support,” Aregash said. (NIPN)
