National Food and Nutrition Strategy.

This Food and Nutrition Strategy presents the agenda of action that the Government of Uganda must take to fulfil legally binding international and national obligations of banishing hunger and malnutrition. The vision of the Uganda Food and Nutrition Strategy is a hunger free country without malnutrition in all segments of the population. Its over-arching goal is to transform Uganda into a hunger free and properly nourished country within a timeframe of 10 years.
The principal objective of the strategy is to improve and assure nutrition security for all Ugandans.
To meet this objective, the Food and Nutrition Strategy design centres on the following components: addressing the needs of various nutritionally vulnerable groups, ensuring political mobilisation and advocacy, cross-sectoral coordination, empowerment, and gender targeting.
In order to eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, the strategy plans to address the food nutrition needs of the child in the womb and during the first two years of the child’s life after birth. Strategic interventions and actions will focus on the following activities: (i) educate pregnant and lactating women on the components of a balanced diet and on how locally available foods can be used to build such balanced diets, the value of exclusive breast-feeding, the importance of prenatal care and regular child growth monitoring, maintaining a sanitary and healthy environment, and controlling infant and childhood illnesses, in particular, (ii) provide education about the kinds of foods that can increase the intake and absorption of vitamins and minerals, (iii) prevent low birth weight through prenatal food and micronutrient supplementation, (iv) improve child growth by encouraging exclusive breast-feeding for the first six months of life, the appropriate use of fortified complementary foods as the child grows, and control of diarrhoea and acute respiratory diseases, (v) address micronutrient deficiencies through direct interventions and food-based approaches. In addition the strategy envisages to address the following issues: (i) address the food and nutrition of pre-school children (3 to 5 years of age), (ii) to address the issue of the food and nutrition needs of maternally displaced persons, refugees, and affected by conflict, (iii) to address the issue of the food and nutrition needs of HIV/AIDS sufferers, (iv) to address the food and nutrition needs of asset-less widows and widowers, orphans, female and child-headed households, adolescent, mothers, victims of domestic abuse, and people with disabilities, (v) to address the issue of human right concerns in the implementing the food and nutrition strategy, (vi) to address the remerging problems of obesity and diet-related non-communication diseases.
In the context of governance, this policy will be implemented by the Uganda Food and Nutrition Council (UFNC). It will be the responsibility of the Council to coordinate the implementation of the strategy to enhance food and nutrition security in Uganda. The Council shall: (i) participate in the annual government budget process to ensure that all activities relating to food and nutrition security in various ministries and public sector agencies receive sufficient resources to meet their objectives, (ii) maintain close relations with Uganda’s development partners to raise supplemental resources for food and nutrition security activities to supplement those provided by government, (iii) ensure that the policies of those sectors with food and nutrition security responsibilities reflect the contributions the particular sector is mandated to undertake with regard to reducing malnutrition, (iv) ensure that nutrition concerns are reflected in the master development policies of Uganda as a basic problem of social and economic development, (v) foster and facilitate the formation of an advocacy network for food and nutrition security made up of dedicated policy actors in Uganda.