The development community is waking up to the need for a data revolution but there is a recognition in some quarters that there’s still some way to go. The Global Nutrition Report published last year showed that 27 developing countries had adequate data on nutrition, and within those countries, an averaged of 15% of children aged 6-24 months were receiving minimally acceptable diets (ranging from 3.1% to 54%).
“I think these are pretty damning results. And perhaps even more damning is that so few countries have data,” argues Shawn Baker, director of global development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who was a panelist at the 1,000 Days symposium held by the Global Health Alliance for Improved Nutrition earlier this year.
The dearth of data and research has an impact that can be felt throughout the nutrition chain from manufacturers to consumers. Lynnette Neufeld, director of monitoring, learning and research at GAIN, says that a lack of data can make the transition from the availability of complementary foods to impact harder.
“Foods are not targeted at the children. They’re not prepared in the way we want them to be,” she explains. “We need to evaluate, evaluate, evaluate. If we don’t know what the challenges are, if where the gaps are, we can’t address them.”
Since 2008, GAIN has explored the potential role of the private sector in providing access to fortified foods and micro-nutrient powders, along with its partners which includes the Gates Foundation and the Department for International Development. GAIN has introduced 23 projects into 17 countries, designed to address any gaps in infant and young child nutrition.
Marc Van Ameringen, GAIN’s executive director, says that at least another five years of similar programming and research will be needed before any conclusion can be drawn on whether the development sector is successfully reducing levels of malnutrition and stunting. This is partly down to how complicated the issue is – “stunting is a hard nut to crack” says Neufeld – but also down to a number of obstacles that are present as a result of a lack of data.
Baker refers to one of the obstacles as a knowledge challenge among the research and programming community.
“We often embark on programmes not knowing what people eat, not knowing what’s available and affordable, not having knowledge of social norms, and not understanding the mother’s environment,” he says.
This knowledge challenge can have a negative impact on the efficacy of market solutions, and Paul Murphy, CEO of Valid Nutrition, who was also present at the 1,000 Days symposium, says that he’d like to see more data research in the form of test marketing to improve the type of products that are being targeted at children.
Improving knowledge of what people are already eating and what’s already available on the market can also help entrepreneurs like Marie Konaté, CEO of Protein Kisseè La (PKL), the first Ivorian company to bring cereals targeted at children aged 6-24 months to market.
PKL has been a success story. It has received substantial support from GAIN and is now part of the Scaling Up Nutrition network, which GAIN set up alongside the World Food Programme. Despite this, Konaté says she still struggles to sell her products to “the mothers in rural areas, in the field, who go to the local market”.
“You can have the capacity to produce, you might not have the capacity to sell,” Konaté says, adding that she’d like more help with reaching those in rural areas, particularly from advertisers and telecommunication providers. She also believes that businesses like PKL need access to data even from multinational food companies that have already invested in rural areas. An understanding of the competition being faced, and other issues such as how many people are buying products from the bigger companies and how many people find current available products too expensive, would be beneficial.
Konaté raises an extremely important point. Data might be slick like oil, but it needs to be cheap and accessible to all. The proliferation of mobile phones throughout developing countries and the increase in text-based platforms such as RapidSMS have made it easier to transfer data. The next step is ensuring that it’s communicated effectively; whether it’s from an NGO’s office to health workers in the field or to small enterprises such as PKL.
Efficient data collection and sharing now will most likely to lead to better nutrition programming and market solutions in the future.
“We need to make the most of nutrition’s time in the sun,” says Baker.
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