Interactive: USAID nutrition projects worldwide

The challenge of ending malnutrition globally is in the spotlight like never before. Currently, at least 12 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals contain indicators “highly relevant” to nutrition, and the United Nations proclaimed years 2016-2025 the U.N. Decade of Action on Nutrition. Nutrition is also sold as a sector with one of the highest returns on investment — where every $1 invested gives $16 in return, according to the “2017 Global Nutrition Report.” Despite promising enthusiasm and advocacy to address undernutrition and undernourishment, progress is slow and the impact of malnutrition on populations high. As of 2018, over 150 million children under 5 years old are stunted and over 50 million are wasted. Scaling up financing is one of the key aspects consistently cited as part of the solution. The United States is by far the single largest donor in nutrition, having disbursed over $2.9 billion in 2015. All of its nutrition-related efforts are channeled through the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose projects reached more than 22.6 million children in 2017 alone. The U.S. funding flows targeting nutrition projects have increased since 2009, when the U.S. incorporated nutrition-specific spending into the budget. This increase, coupled with the establishment of major global initiatives — such as Feed the Future and Food for Peace — substantially boosted USAID’s engagement in addressing malnutrition. Devex has analyzed a combination of ongoing and completed USAID nutrition projects, basing the initial data on USAID’s published nutrition profiles and leading global nutrition initiatives. The result of the Devex Analytics work is an interactive visualization that allows you to explore each of the projects mentioned below in depth. Geographic scope Currently, Devex analysis indicates that USAID has more than 250 ongoing or recently finished nutrition-related projects across 79 countries — 36 countries are in Africa. The three African countries with the highest number of projects are Ethiopia (41), Kenya (40), and Ghana (39). Meanwhile, Bangladesh and Nepal account for the highest number of projects in Asia (37 and 26 respectively), while Guatemala and Honduras concentrate the most USAID nutrition-related initiatives in the Americas (24 and 15 respectively). Top global and bilateral projects Though most of the projects are bilateral, 28 percent are global in scope. Global projects represent the highest share of USAID’s ongoing investments in nutrition: The top three global projects with the highest value amount to over $1 billion. With a budget of half a billion dollars, the Maternal Child Survival Program is USAID’s largest initiative in relation to nutrition. Led by Jhpiego, the project aims to end preventable child and maternal deaths in a span of one generation across 31 countries, primarily in Africa. The program is one of USAID’s flagship projects, as traditionally, U.S. nutrition-related funding targets the critical 1,000-day period, between the beginning of a mother’s pregnancy until the child’s second birthday. This month, USAID has announced the follow-up to the Maternal Child Survival Program that is finishing this year, MOMENTUM — Moving Integrated, Quality Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health, and Family Planning Services to Scale — project, with an estimated budget range of $100-300 million. Other key global projects included in the interactive visualization are a $475 million Leadership in Public Financial Management II project led by Nathan Associates, which is helping to select the optimum nutrition interventions and a $200 million Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance III project implemented by FHI360. In terms of bilateral projects, the top three with the highest funding are worth nearly $500 million together: Kenya, Bangladesh, and Zambia. The latter has one of the highest prevalences of malnutrition worldwide, with an estimated 40 percent of children under the age of 5 being stunted. USAID key nutrition initiatives A big portion of USAID nutrition efforts can be attributed to Feed the Future and Food for Peace initiatives. The former targets 19 countries and is considered the primary driver behind the U.S. effort to ensure food security globally. Some of the most prominent projects under Feed the Future include a global project on health communication capacity, led by the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs and worth $140 million. A project strengthening subnational health structures in Kenya, led by FHI360 and PATH, also falls under Feed the Future and is worth nearly $214 million. Under the umbrella of Feed the Future, USAID funds multiple innovation labs, aiming to invest in research to help tackle the greatest global challenges in agriculture and food security. Among them are Tufts University’s nutrition lab, a horticulture lab at the University of California Davis, and a food security policy lab at Michigan State University. The Food for Peace initiative, on the other hand, incorporates nutrition into humanitarian aid and is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is by far the largest of the U.S. food assistance programs and currently targets 15 countries. Though the emergency activities are not included in this analysis, the program’s development activities aiming to reduce food insecurity for long-term resilience have been considered. Some of the key Food for Peace projects include one on strengthening household ability to respond to development opportunities in Bangladesh, led by CARE and worth $115 million; and one improving food and nutrition security in Ethiopia, led by Food for the Hungry and worth around $106 million. Food for Peace has recently published its annual program statement for 2019, which provides important information for prospective applicants. The eligibility is unrestricted and the total award ceiling has been set to $2 billion. Nutrition at the core of the projects Forty-two percent of all USAID projects are nutrition-specific and include efforts to directly reduce malnutrition. An example of one nutrition-specific project is in Senegal — Feed the Future: Senegal Cultivating Nutrition — and it works to directly increase access to diverse, nutritious, and safe food. However, most other projects are known to be nutrition-sensitive, where nutrition is the means to an end, rather than the end in itself. For instance, USAID is working in Malawi on a project titled Organized Network of Services for Everyone’s Health Activity to strengthen health systems for family planning, child health, and water and sanitation, which will indirectly improve nutrition in the targeted regions. In addition to the nutrition-specific classification, we can also divide the projects into particular sectors. Normally, the high-value nutrition projects are multisectoral — around 19 percent — which means that several different objectives are combined, such as WASH, education, disaster preparedness, and livelihood. Devex analysis indicates USAID’s nutrition projects are mostly concentrated in the fields of agriculture and health. Around 38 percent of the projects relate to agriculture and food security, while 37 percent are health focused. Most of USAID’s nutrition priorities are part of the agency’s global health programming, which includes maternal and child health. The U.S. is also a strong proponent of an integrated approach to agriculture and food security, which is a major driver of nutrition-related investments. Partners All USAID nutrition projects have a prime organization leading the efforts, but there is plenty of opportunity to build partnerships and become an implementing partner. Though each project should be assessed individually, as many implementing organizations have their own scope of operations, some organizations have been more successful in being awarded as a prime contractor than others. According to Devex analysis, the top three primes with the highest number of led projects overall are Catholic Relief Services (14 projects), FHI360 (12 projects), and ACDI/VOCA (12 projects). Local organizations are often involved as implementing partners, therefore the majority of projects’ primes are international organizations or local branches of international organizations. Several of the local organizations that act as primes are faith-based organizations. The African Evangelical Enterprise, for example, leads a project on improving the nutrition status of women and children in Rwanda, while Churches Health Association of Zambia leads a project on reducing maternal and newborn deaths in Zambia. Manola De Vos, analytics engagement lead, provided her expertise on research and methodology for this data set. Aminah Ann Pungutan and Janadale Leene Coralde, data assistants, also contributed to this article. View the interactive visualization of USAID nutrition projects here. Are you interested in knowing more about methodology or data insights capabilities? Reach out to our experts at analysts@devex.com for more information.