This brief summarizes nutrition-relevant policies in Nigeria. We examine i) nutrition context, policy objectives, indicators, budget, and activities, ii) key beneficiaries, actors and coordination, iii) monitoring, evaluation, and accountability, and iv) whether current policies are aligned with the World Health Assembly (WHA) global targets.

Conference papers on nutrition and food policy in Nigeria - reports on obstacles to food security, malnutrition, and role of international organizations in providing food aid and promoting food production; examines the interrelationship of health and nutrition, food requirements and distribution; considers the contribution of agroforestry to food supply; looks at food processing, food industries, economic and sociological aspects of food policies, problems of their formulation, etc. Diagrams, references, statistical tables.

In The Nigerian Rice Economy the authors assess three options for reducing this dependency - tariffs and other trade policies; increasing domestic rice production; and improving post-harvest rice processing and marketing - and identify improved production and post-harvest activities as the most promising. These options however, will require substantially increased public investments in a variety of areas, including research and development, basic infrastructure (for example, irrigation, feeder roads, and electricity), and rice milling technologies.

The MIT International Nutrition Planning Program (INP) was initiated in the fall of 1972 with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, later supplemented by funds from USAID under the 2110 Program. Con ceived as a multidisciplinary undertaking, the INP was a joint effort of the Department of Nutrition and Food Science and the Center for Inter national Studies at MIT that also included representatives of the Depart ments of Economics, Political Science, Urban Studies, Humanities (Anthropology), and Civil Engineering. It has been successful in attract ing graduate students and conducting research on various international food and nutrition problems, including the design of intervention pro grams. A condition of the original grant from the Rockefeller Foundation was the organization of a meeting to summarize and evaluate the prog ress of the program. It was ultimately decided that the best approach would be a workshop that would attempt to assess what had been learned about the implementation of food and nutrition policies since the start of the INP. Out of concern for food and nutrition policy issues, the World Hunger Programme of The United Nations University (UNU) and the Ford Foundation also agreed to cosponsor the workshop.

Undernutrition remains a major source of human suffering and an obstacle to national economic and human development in many African countries. This report investigates undernutrition's persistence, drawing on case studies of the public response to the problem in Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Uganda. Analyzing each nation's policymaking structures, political actors, understanding of undernutrition, and the timing of public responses, the author explains why none of these four nations has mounted an effective campaign to eliminate undernutrition. The author identifes several different causes of this shortcoming, with one underlying flaw in the various public responses standing out: a fundamental failure on the part of political leaders to see undernutrition as a grave problem that undermines development efforts in their nations. The author concludes that an effective response to undernutrition in these countries requires the formation of national advocacy coalitions that can raise public awareness of the problem, highlight policymakers' duty to ensure the nutrition of their citizens, and link proper nutrition to general national development. This report should serve as a resource for advocates, researchers, and others concerned with undernutrition in Africa.

This 2013 Global Food Policy Report is the third in an annual series that provides an in-depth look at major food policy developments and events. Initiated in response to resurgent interest in food and nutrition security, the series offers a yearly overview of the food policy developments that have contributed to or hindered progress in achieving food and nutrition security. It reviews what happened in food policy and why, examines key challenges and opportunities, shares new evidence and knowledge, and highlights emerging issues.