Social protection underpins sustainable development and it can play a key role in improving food and nutrition security and reducing household poverty. Despite this, about 73% of people live without access to adequate social protection, according to the ILO.
The question of how the situation can be improved will be thrust under the microscope on World Food Day, as this year’s theme is “social protection and agriculture”. The particular focus will be on how creating direct access to food or the means to buy food can have nutritional, social and economic benefits.
It is widely recognised within the development community that there are four key areas that need attention when dealing with social protection. These are diets, health, care practices and household income. So what type of strategies are needed to ensure better ways to access food? According to the Global Nutrition Report 2015 [p.39, 43], social protection should be designed to not just promote nutrient consumption but encourage people to eat healthier diets. In order to make social protection more nutrition-sensitive behaviour change around consumption and health care should also be taken into account.
“We need to get into the social nexus. There is an unwilling stubbornness of letting go of messages and changing behaviour,” says Valerie Curtis who, in partnership with GAIN, was involved in research in East Java, Indonesia, that explored ways to encourage healthy eating and exclusive breastfeeding. “We need to understand how behaviours are set in place by the settings that are the everyday routines.”
Knowing why people eat what and how they do is critical in consuming better food; it can also influence household decision makers, usually mothers, to make improved choices for children’s health, like choosing to breastfeed instead of using formula milk, or opting in to a voucher-based scheme. If there is no knowledge of the social and cultural levers that lead to people making certain choices, then it’s harder to create demand for nutritious products, Curtis adds.
Technology can play a vital role in delivering the messages to encourage change, as well as being used for cash transfers. Last year, GAIN launched a mobile SMS project in Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana and Mozambique. The initiative, mNutrition, was developed, in part, because few current mHealth services encompass nutrition and because nutrition interventions can be difficult to introduce into traditional health models.
A combination of lack of resources and time to invest in training health care professionals means that mothers can’t receive regular one-to-one counselling. Given that sub-Saharan Africa has been undergoing a mobile revolution, being able to contact mothers and families directly is likely to have a significant impact. It also gets round the issue of privacy – some women may be apprehensive about talking about their maternal health or baby issues outside of the household setting.
The FAO recognises that it may be tempting to introduce messaging into any agricultural strategy. However, if it’s directed at anything other than knowledge – income for example – then it’s going to have little effect. Something like income can determine whether a mother or family can afford to buy nutritious foods in the first place. But even then, demand creation is unlikely to be met if proper distribution channels aren’t set up.
At the 1,000 Days symposium held in February, Marti van Liere, GAIN’s director of Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition, called for the development sector to collaborate with behaviour change experts. She also stressed the need for the capacity building of development professionals, to help promote and sell multi-nutrient powders for instance.
Small private companies and enterprises are at the heart of the nutritious food market. They have business knowledge and the determination to address critical issues, but one thing they can lack is access to resources. Marie Konaté, chief executive of Protein Kissée-Là, a member of the SUN network, admits that whilst she has had success – her products account for about a third of infant food sales in the Ivory Coast – she would like to see more help in reaching rural areas.
“It’s difficult to reach mothers that are in the field or in the market. Most don’t have access to TV or radio...and the cost of marketing and transportation is very, very high,” she says. “But when you do reach them [the mothers], they do buy the products, if it’s not too expensive of course.”
Small businesses like Konaté’s can face challenges scaling up. Where existing food suppliers are either providing inadequate levels of nutrients or failing to meet demand for logistical reasons, there is opportunity for organisations to partner with government bodies and external donors. With expertise and financial aid, the development sector can help deliver nation-wide schemes.
An example of how GAIN has rolled out such a scheme is in Tajikistan, where it has partnered with the country’s Milling Association and Chamber of Commerce – with the support of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection – alongside the likes of UNICEF and WFP, to develop a sustainable wheat flour fortification programme. There have been previous efforts to introduce a programme in the country, but up until now – GAIN’s programme launched in September – the country hasn’t had one. This has been seen as a contributing factor as to why Tajikistan’s stunting rate among children under-five is around 26%.
Discussions on social protection often centre around income-generating activities in regards to agriculture and food consumption. By brining issues such as messaging, behaviour change and demand creation to the fore, a family might be helped to make informed decisions on what food they access and how.
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