Earlier this week I was in Maputo working with the dynamic
GAIN Mozambique team under the excellent leadership of Katia Santos Dias. It was the first time I had been to
Mozambique in the past 20 years and while many things have changed rapidly, the
rate of stunting has changed very slowly indeed.
Why has stunting declined so slowly? There are lots of ideas: rapid economic
growth which has bypassed all but those on high incomes, high levels of
corruption, El Nino of 2015-2016, the collapse of the national currency, the
return of civil unrest in the north, poor donor coordination and performance,
and low levels of supporting public services (for example, 75% of the
population have no access to improved sanitation, only 25% of girls are
enrolled in secondary school and only 1 nurse or midwife for every 2500
people—see the Global Nutrition Report for more data).
In a context such as Mozambique, where leadership to improve nutrition is patchy, it was really refreshing to meet with two of the Marketplace for Nutritious Food grantees that GAIN works with.

In a context where trust in public agencies is low, perhaps
we should put more faith in supporting small and medium businesses (including
farmers) as an engine of growth.
Yes, they will have their fair share of untrustworthy characters, but I
really don’t see where else widespread inclusive growth is going to come
from. If they grow, these businesses will
employ more people, drive wages up, stimulate the demand for other products,
eventually generate more tax revenue to spend on public services and, if they
are producing foods that are compatible with a healthy diet, they will improve
nutrition status.
It seems to me that a key priority for the Government of
Mozambique and their development partners is to make it easier for businesses
to do business, finding the businesses that want to do positive things for
nutrition—and then backing them.
No comments:
Post a Comment