Cluster evaluation of “Establishing a hunger-free initiative for West Africa” and “Mainstreaming nutrition in CAADP and agriculture policies and programmes in sub-Saharan Africa”

Challenges integrating nutrition and the elimination of hunger in agricultural programmes persist, especially in West Africa. Difficulties lie in the lack of overall understanding of the links between agriculture, nutrition and food security, institutional capacity, and coordination amongst key actors to support nutrition-sensitive agricultural policies.

The projects (GCP/RAF/476/GER and GCP/RAF/477/GER), implemented by FAO between 2014 and 2017, aimed to address the challenge of mainstreaming nutrition and hunger into agricultural initiatives, especially in the countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

This report presents the findings of the final cluster evaluation of both projects. The evaluation assessed countries‘ advancement with policy design and formulation, as well as the challenges they face, including a lack of strategic oversight, strong management and monitoring and evaluation. The evaluation team also developed a nutrition marker, which applies a set of established criteria as proxies for the assessment of nutrition integration into policy or investment plans.