While the United States remains the single largest donor to nutrition, the European Union is also working to put the issue on the global development agenda. For the 2014-2020 funding period, the bloc made a pledge to invest €3.5 billion ($3.9 billion) to reduce the number of stunted children globally by at least 7 million.
To shed some light on the European Commission’s financial support for nutrition, Devex took a closer look at the data. We analyzed close to 5,000 contracts awarded in 2018 by two departments — the commission’s development arm DEVCO, also known as EuropeAid; and its humanitarian arm ECHO — which were published in the commission’s financial transparency system.
From those, we identified 178 with a nutrition-specific focus. Although combating malnutrition depends on multisectoral interventions, the contracts considered here focus on the immediate causes of malnutrition, including dietary diversity and quality; nutrition-related disease treatment and management; micronutrient supplementation; breastfeeding; and infant and young child feeding practices.