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| VP Shettima led Ethiopia-Nigeria Exchange |
Vice President Kashim Shettima returned to Abuja on Friday after leading a high-level Nigerian delegation on a three-day Nutrition Leadership Exchange in Ethiopia, declaring that Nigeria will adapt practical lessons from the East African nation’s Seqota Declaration to deepen its own Nutrition 774 Initiative. The visit, themed “Moving the Needle on Nutrition,” was far more than a diplomatic courtesy call. It marked a deliberate South-South knowledge transfer aimed at converting political commitments into measurable reductions in child stunting and the broader economic drag of undernutrition.
At the heart of the exchange lies a shared recognition: both countries are populous African giants wrestling with stubbornly high rates of child malnutrition, yet Ethiopia has built a structured, multi-sectoral, and increasingly data-driven response that Nigeria now seeks to localise.
Shettima framed the challenge in stark terms.
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Roughly 40 percent of Nigerian children under five are stunted, according to the most recent Demographic and Health Survey data, and undernutrition is estimated to cost the country about $56 billion annually in lost human capital—equivalent to more than 12 percent of national income. “We act to protect learning. We act to preserve earnings. We act to project productivity,” the Vice President said.
The Scale of Nigeria’s Challenge
Nigeria carries one of the world’s heaviest burdens of stunted children. Stunting—low height-for-age resulting from chronic undernutrition in the first 1,000 days of life—impairs cognitive development, reduces school performance, and lowers adult earnings by an estimated 20 percent. Independent analyses project that without accelerated action, a large share of Nigeria’s future workforce will carry these lifelong deficits, with long-term GDP losses potentially reaching hundreds of billions of dollars.
The National Policy on Food and Nutrition 2026–2035 sets progressive targets: reduce stunting to 32 percent by 2029, 28 percent by 2032, and 25 percent by 2035. Achieving these goals requires more than federal pronouncements. It demands coordinated delivery across all 774 local government areas—the precise rationale behind Nutrition 774, which treats each local council as the fundamental unit of planning, financing, and accountability.
Ethiopia’s Seqota Declaration: A 15-Year Roadmap
Launched in 2015, the Seqota Declaration is Ethiopia’s high-level, 15-year commitment to end stunting among children under two by 2030. Named after a river in a historically drought-prone area, it operates through nine sector ministries and follows a phased approach: an Innovation Phase (2016–2020) that tested models in selected woredas (districts), an Expansion Phase (2021–2025), and a national Scale-Up Phase (2026–2030).
Key features include nutrition-specific interventions (complementary feeding, vitamin A and zinc supplementation, management of severe acute malnutrition), nutrition-sensitive actions (agricultural productivity, women’s empowerment, school feeding), and infrastructure investments (water, sanitation, and hygiene). Modelling studies by Ethiopia’s National Information Platform for Nutrition estimate that Seqota interventions averted roughly 60,000 stunting cases in the early expansion years, with potential to avert millions more if scaled fully. Ethiopian officials reported that community mobilisation and improvements in food nutritional value have protected more than 100,000 children.
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| Right — VP Shettima, Governor Otti & Adeleke |
Deputy Prime Minister Temesgen Tiruneh emphasised sustained political leadership, predictable financing, and results tracking. Health Minister Dr. Mekdes Daba underscored the multi-sectoral principle: “Malnutrition cannot be defeated by one ministry or sector acting alone.” Investing in the first 1,000 days, she noted, ranks among the highest-return development investments a country can make.
What the Nigerian Delegation Saw and Learned
The Nigerian team—comprising governors of Jigawa (Umar Namadi), Zamfara (Dauda Lawal), Osun (Ademola Adeleke), and Abia (Alex Otti), plus key ministers including Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare Muhammad Ali Pate, Agriculture and Food Security Minister Abubakar Kyari, Budget and Economic Planning Minister Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, Education Minister Maruf Tunji Alausa, and Water Resources Minister Joseph Terlumun Utsev—undertook field visits across Oromia.
They toured wheat, banana, and papaya farms, the “Bounty of the Basket” Training Centre, and households in Mojo to examine how agricultural value-chain development links production to household nutrition and livelihoods. They also visited the Ethiopian Artificial Intelligence Institute to explore data and technology applications for public-service delivery. The final day focused on early childhood development—pre-primary education, healthcare, daycare, and parental coaching—followed by a working session translating observations into concrete Nutrition 774 commitments.
Governors emerged with an “Addis Ababa Commitment on Nutrition,” pledging to strengthen domestic financing, deepen grassroots accountability, institutionalise unified planning and budgeting, and explore a national nutrition intervention fund and emergency declaration. They highlighted lessons in bottom-up planning, cross-sector coordination, predictable financing, and performance scorecards.
Financing, Legislation, and Institutional Architecture
Shettima used the platform to accelerate domestic reforms. Nigeria has committed $26 million to the Child Nutrition Fund, unlocking matching support to reach $52 million. Twenty-one states have contributed $6.3 million since 2023 for prevention and treatment supplies. A proposed Presidential Nutrition Investment Fund is intended to provide catalytic financing, while a Nutrition Financing Subcommittee works to mobilise further domestic resources.
Critically, the Vice President announced plans to fast-track a National Food and Nutrition Bill. With nutrition committees already established in 32 State Houses of Assembly and more than 450 local governments, the timing is favourable. The bill aims to protect nutrition financing across successive administrations and enforce a federal-state-local compact. “We can only claim that our budget fulfils its purpose when it nourishes a child,” Shettima stated.
Nutrition 774 already provides a single framework uniting all tiers of government. Governors and local government chairpersons are expected to lead implementation in their jurisdictions, bringing health, agriculture, social protection, water, sanitation, hygiene, and education to the same mother and child. A Private Sector Engagement Framework seeks to improve the availability and affordability of nutritious foods, with renewed attention to fortification of salt, flour, edible oil, and sugar.
Bilateral Dimensions and African Context
On the sidelines, Shettima and Tiruneh reviewed broader bilateral relations, exploring cooperation in agriculture, trade, investment, food security, aviation, and security. Both leaders reaffirmed the value of African countries learning from one another and committed to a joint statement on continued nutrition cooperation. “Nigeria and Ethiopia owe Africa an example worthy of its children,” Shettima said. Tiruneh noted the longstanding relationship could help shape the continent’s development trajectory, especially under the African Continental Free Trade Area.
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From Exchange to Outcomes
The real test, Shettima emphasised on his return, will be translation into improved outcomes for Nigerian families, particularly women and children.
Ethiopia’s experience demonstrates that political leadership at the highest levels, multi-sectoral coordination, phased scaling, community engagement, and rigorous monitoring can move the needle. Nigeria’s federal structure and the explicit focus of Nutrition 774 on the 774 local governments offer a complementary architecture that, if properly financed and held accountable, could produce comparable or greater impact given the country’s larger population and agricultural potential.
Success will require sustained domestic resource mobilisation beyond donor matching funds, genuine empowerment of local governments, integration of technology for real-time tracking, and private-sector participation in food systems. It will also demand addressing underlying drivers—food inflation, insecurity in major producing regions, and climate shocks—that continue to undermine household diets.
The Nigeria–Ethiopia exchange illustrates a maturing African approach to development challenges: peer learning grounded in local realities rather than imported blueprints. Whether Nutrition 774, fortified by Seqota lessons and new legislative protections, can reverse decades of stagnation in child nutrition will depend on the speed and fidelity with which the commitments made in Addis Ababa and Oromia are executed across Nigeria’s vast and diverse local governments. The stakes—measured in children’s brains, future earnings, and national productivity—could hardly be higher.
Samuel O. Sulaimon is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Naijapiz. He covers News, Sports, Finance, Faiths, Education, Technology.
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