Improving evidence on nutrition with MQSUN+

Improving evidence on nutrition

As a signatory of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data’s Inclusive Data Charter, DI is committed to improving the supply of fully disaggregated data. We also use disaggregated data to its fullest extent in our own research and analysis.

Since 2014, DI has made significant contributions to efforts to better identify, track and evaluate nutrition-relevant spending and improve the associated data picture. In 2018 this included our work as a member of the Maximising the Quality of Scaling Up Nutrition Plus (MQSUN+) consortium, a group committed to helping the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement improve the quality of nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programmes and other nutrition-related investments.

As part of the consortium, DI contributed to two projects in 2019.

The first tracked and assessed DFID’s spending for nutrition between 2010 and 2016. We provided detailed analysis of DFID’s nutrition spend, producing an in-depth report and accompanying presentation. We also reviewed DFID’s planned projects up to 2020 for nutrition sensitivity.

The second supported SUN countries Liberia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe with their fourth-round budget analysis. DI provided technical assistance to help country teams collect, update and validate national budget data on nutrition spending and support better tracking of nutrition-specific and sensitive investments. This tracking is central to ensuring that investments in nutrition are well accounted for and directed to best effect. DI also provided guidance to each country on how they could improve their tracking methodologies and begin to increase accuracy and accountability through capturing spending at the subnational level.

DI continues to contribute to bettering data on nutrition financing, primarily through the TASC consortium.