National multi-sectoral Plan of Action for Food and Nutrition (NMPFAN) 2021-2025.

This National Multi-Sectoral Plan of Action for Food and Nutrition 2021 – 2025 (NMPFAN) recognises that malnutrition has multi-sectoral causes and serious social and economic consequences and therefore requires cross-cutting solutions and strong commitment to improving the standards of living for citizens and socioeconomic development of the nation. Developed in compliance with the Sustainable Development Goals and in line with the National Policy on Food and Nutrition, in collaboration with government sectors, development partners, academics, civil society organisations and organised private sector, this NMPFAN is an operational Plan designed to be implemented under six result areas as contained in the National Policy on food and nutrition and focusing on infants, young children, mothers, community-based management of acute malnutrition, improving household hygiene to reduce infections, promoting exclusive breastfeeding as well as appropriate complementary and child feeding practices.
The Plan is structured as follows: 1) Introduction, including: National context Policy framework; food and nutrition situation in Nigeria; nutrition responses; gaps in intervention coverage and challenges. 2) Food and Nutrition Action Plan (2021-2025), including: Background information; rationale; purpose of the Plan; goal, objectives, priority areas and expected outcomes; implementation of the Plan. 3) Costing and Financing of the Plan. 4) Monitoring and evaluation, accountability and learning. This Plan's purpose and goal is to respond to the challenges of nutrition in Nigeria and direct all interventions, programme and activities to reduce malnutrition and hunger among the Nigerians, focusing on the most vulnerable especially women and children, as well as internally displaced persons, to achieve optimal nutritional status, thus leading to increased productivity and national development.
In order to achieve the goal, the Plan identifies the following objectives and targets: food security improvement at the national, community, and household levels; reducing undernutrition among infants and children, adolescents, and women of reproductive age; ensuring incorporation of nutrition education into formal and informal training; preventing and controlling chronic nutrition-related non-communicable diseases; strengthening systems for providing early warning information on the food and nutrition situation; ensuring universal access to nutrition-sensitive social protection; increasing exclusive breastfeeding rate and access to potable water; achieving universal access of all school children in the pre- and basic school classes to school-based feeding programmes. The implementation of the Plan concerns the following activities: empowering farmers cooperatives for commercial production of food crops; improvement of production and consumption of vitamins and micronutrient rich foods; promoting household level fortification of cereal, root crops and legumes, industrially processed rice and palm oil; supporting production and diversification of fruits and vegetables; providing improved planting materials and small ruminants (sheep and goats) starter pack to farmers to promote food security; supporting water supply interventions in emergency settings and rural areas; providing smoking kilns to cluster of small-scale fish processors; promoting access to agricultural inputs and training farmers on appropriate use of fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides for foodstuff preservation; sensitisation of farmers on proper use of environmentally friendly agricultural technologies; conducting awareness campaign on healthy living, good dietary habits and food quality and safety.