Agricultural Sector Food Security and Nutrition Strategy, 2016- 2025

There is an economic dominance of the oil industry in Nigeria. However, agriculture remains the mainstay of a large part of the population and the domestic food crop production is not at par with the rising population. As such, food insecurity is a major challenge. The overall objective of the Strategy is to o improve the food and nutrition security of all Nigerians while empowering women and promoting resilience of the most vulnerable through sustainable agricultural livelihoods. The specific objectives include; • To improve food security at the national, community, and household levels; • To significantly reduce undernutrition, including micronutrient deficiency disorders, among infants, children, adolescents, and women of reproductive age; • To prevent chronic nutrition-related non-communicable diseases; • To increase the knowledge of nutrition among the populace and integrate nutrition education into agricultural formal and informal trainings; • To strengthen systems that build resilience for improved food and nutrition situation; and • To incorporate food and nutrition considerations into the Federal, State and Local Government agricultural sector development plans. The targets for the Strategy is based on global and regional food security and nutrition targets. The guiding principles of the Strategy aligns with FAO’s framework for the analysis of food security and nutrition for the Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information Mapping System. As such, the Strategy will support the availability, accessibility, use, and stability of resources (capital, knowledge, and other) for vulnerable groups; to promote improved food consumption, care practices, and access to health services. Other guiding principles include the integration of nutrition into agricultural value chains; supporting private sector roles for sustainability, scale and impact; and addressing food security and nutrition as a human right. Some of the key priorities of the Strategy include; to enhance value chains for improved nutrition through postharvest loss reduction, increasing production and processing of animal foods, reviving prison farms etc.; diversifying household food production and consumption especially targeting women and increase access to micronutrient rich foods through scaling up the production of vegetables and fruits by smallholder farmers, promoting homestead gardens, etc; improve food safety along the value chain; build resilience and social protection nets through food systems for vulnerable groups; promote nutrition research and information systems, among others. The target beneficiaries of the Strategy are women of childbearing age, children, internally displaced people and special circumstances vulnerable groups. The monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system is to support the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), at both central and decentralised level, to give account towards key institutional stakeholders, donor organisations and most importantly Nigerian citizens on the implementation of the Strategy for 2016 to 2025. The primary purpose of the M&E System is to assess the extent to which the Strategy is accomplishing its overall goal of improving the food and nutrition security of all Nigerians while empowering women and promoting resilience of the most vulnerable through sustainable agricultural livelihoods. The Results Framework (RF) is the key planning, monitoring and evaluation tool for the Strategy. It translates the AFSNS and its theory of change into a results chain and provides the criteria (indicators, targets and sources of verifications) to monitor and assess progress being made towards the expected outputs, outcomes and, ultimately, impact