COMCEC

Malnutrition in the OIC Member

Countries: A Trap for Poverty

owned development framework to support regional and international partnerships. NEPAD is

primarily implemented at the Regional Economic Community (REC) level.

For example, NEPAD is working with the South African Development Community in order to

develop a Food and Nutrition Security Knowledge-Sharing and Monitoring Platform. This

platform aims to facilitate peer to peer learning, foster capacity development and encourage a

multi-sectoral approach to information and knowledge sharing which can be used to support

advocacy for increasing investments in Food and Nutrition security. The platform can also be

used to improve regional level coordination and foster accountability in implementing the

Malabo roadmap and CAADP programme of work (2015-2025) (“Food and Nutrition Security

in SADC Boosted by Knowledge-Sharing”2015].

Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP)

The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) is a policy

framework aimed at achieving food and nutrition security by focusing on agricultural

development in the AU (Lokosang, Osei, and Covic 2015). It is an African owned programme

which aims to help meeting the MDGs in terms of food and nutrition security and poverty

alleviation through increased incomes and sustainable socio-economic growth, which will be

achieved through increased public spending on agriculture (at least 10% by 2008) leading to a

6% annual agricultural growth rate by 2015 (Giyose 2013). NEPAD, the African Union and

Regional Economic Communities will help achieve these targets (South African Development

Community 2015).

CAADP consists of four pillars. Pillar three specifically aims to “increase food supply and

reduce hunger”. The nutrition initiative was launched in 2014, and came out of a 2011 review

which found most National Agriculture Food Security Investment Plans lacked specific

nutrition objectives and actions (FAO 2014). Additionally, CADAAP includes a specific nutrition

initiative with the goal of mainstreaming nutrition into national agricultural investment plans.

The FAO and NEPAD facilitate the nutrition task force of CAADP. The overall goal of the

initiative is to improve nutrition, which a more specific goal of supporting countries to

integrate nutrition into their CAADP process. The initiative also includes four sub-goals

including strengthening advocacy and nutrition governance at the regional level, supporting

monitoring and evaluation at the national and regional level, maximizing regional learning and

leveraging resources and coordinating support for agriculture-nutrition capacity development

(“CAADP Nutrition Task Force”2016].

There are currently 40 country compacts, 28 national investment plans and both ECOWAS and

COMESA have regional CAADP policies. As of the end of 2014, 12 out of 17 countries in West

Africa had developed roadmaps for nutrition integration including the following OIC countries:

Benin, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. In

East and Central Africa 15 out of 18 countries are in the process of implementing their

nutrition integration roadmap including OIC countries Cameroon, and Djibouti (FAO 2014).

Assessment of the African Union Nutrition and Food Security Polices

As mentioned above, the most recent African Union policy (2015-2020) was developed taking

into account failures of the previous plans. Additionally, the new plan also drew on regional

cases of success, looking at which factors were in place in countries which have seen

significant reductions in malnutrition in the last ten to fifteen years. The AU policy, which is