Ethiopia: Save the Children awarded $6 million to strengthen Ministry of Agriculture systems and capacity to integrate nutrition into large-scale agriculture programs

Save the Children recently received a $6 million, five-year award from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation focused on supporting Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture to resource and operationalize their Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Strategy. The project will provide direct financial support to the ministry through an innovative, results-based grant mechanism that aims to sustainably strengthen ministry systems and the capacity of technical staff, support policy implementation, facilitate data use for decision making, and strengthen ministry-led coordination of the multi-sectoral actors engaged in nutrition-sensitive agriculture at the national, regional, zonal and woreda levels. The results-based grant mechanism, which will be paired with limited technical assistance from Save the Children, will encourage ministry leadership and ownership of the project’s objectives and outcomes. Activities will be implemented in the Amhara, Oromia, and Somali regions with the goal of enabling the Ministry of Agriculture to strengthen its systems and develop effective tools and methodologies before scaling them throughout the country. Close coordination with Alive & Thrive, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the European Union, and other development partners supporting the roll out of Ethiopia’s Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture Strategy will ensure project support builds on existing investments and increases the Ministry of Agriculture’s ability to successfully and sustainably operationalize the strategy into the future.

Save the Children brings extensive experience leading nutrition-sensitive agriculture initiatives in Ethiopia, including through the USAID-funded Growth through Nutrition (GtN, $72.9M) and Empowering New Generations to Improve Nutrition and Economic Opportunities (ENGINE, $65.6M) programs. We are pleased to continue to support the Government of Ethiopia to achieve their goals of providing access to safe, diversified, and nutritious foods and creating an enabling environment for nutrition-sensitive agriculture.