The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) and Kenya Institute for Public Policy, Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) are executing the National Information Platform for Food and Nutrition (NIPFN) project.
The project which is established by the European Union (EU) with the support from United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFiD) and the Melinda Gates Foundation aims at creating capacity within national institutions to operate a platform using existing data and information; strengthening the capacity to track national objectives to prevent malnutrition and monitor nutrition investment and build capacity to analyse and disseminate information for evidence based decision making.
The overall objective of the National Information Platform for Nutrition is to inform policies and programmes for improving human nutrition by bringing together and analysing information and data from all sectors that can influence nutrition such as health, agriculture, food security, water, sanitation and social protection.
The process of providing evidence to inform policies and programmes will be done through analysing current policies and programmes to identify issues and policy gaps and analyse multi-sectoral data to improve understanding of factors that influence nutrition at national and county level.
The project will maximize on the analysis and interpretation of existing information and data on nutrition to improve understanding of the factors that influence it, both nationally and locally.
The project will help to monitor national and sub-national progress in preventing malnutrition, strengthening the accountability of governments and donors to meet their commitments to prevent malnutrition, create capacity within national institutions to operate and maintain a National Information Platform for Food and Nutrition, strengthen capacity to track progress in meeting national objectives to prevent undernutrition and monitor nutrition investments and build the capacity of national policy makers and programme planners to make better use of evidence in designing and implementing nutrition-related policies.
The project is instrumental in support of the Government development agenda on nutrition and Food Security as spelt out in the Food and Nutrition Policy (FNSP) 2011, the National Nutrition Action Plan 2017 and BIG Four Agenda. The policy places nutrition and Food Security central to human development in the country, emphasizes the need to ensure the right to nutrition and quality food as a constitutional right, provides relevant policy directions and articulates the multi-sectoral approach to addressing malnutrition in the country.
The initiative is aimed at supporting countries to strengthen information systems for nutrition and to help understand the factors driving improvements in nutrition and to use the evidence for prioritizing policies and programmes to prevent malnutrition. Kenya is one of the ten countries earmarked for establishment of the initiative.
The stakeholders endorsed the establishment of the NIPN in Kenya but renamed it National Information Platform for Food and Nutrition (NIPFN) to capture the broad and inter-sectoral scope of nutrition.