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Sylvia Szabo, Sinead Mowlds, Joan Manuel Claros, et al.

2.2 The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program

The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program’s (GAFSP) Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E)
framework is designed to strengthen the partnership for sustainable development, with an overarch-
ing program goal (Tier – I) to focus on improvement of incomes and food security of a significant
number of rural communities in the world’s poorest countries, in support of the SDGs to end hunger
and poverty. As a part of the M&E process — and while awaiting for the final SDG indicators
agreed by the UN Statistical Commission — the GAFSP team has performed extensive analytical
exercise to validate indicators for food security/nutrition measurement at a country/national level
using standardised scores derived from experience-based methods. As data users, accountability for
measurement of results in nutrition remains challenging for multiple reasons.
First, data coverage for some of the key nutrition-specific indicators is sparse. Indicators central to
SDG2 theory of change, such as minimum dietary diversity (proxy indicators of diet quality/access),
need to be tested for cross-country comparisons. For the purpose of monitoring, evaluation, and tar-
geting, careful validation of these indicators must be undertaken, which remains challenging. Second,
food consumption scores, diet quality, and diversity merit more comprehensive and standardised
measurement across all developing countries. This will also help and expedite the process of external
validation. This also includes standardisation of recall approach for better comparison. Finally, a
transparent and credible tracking and disclosure of financial resource requirements for monitoring of
nutrition indicators must be in place. Currently, identifying the cost implications of implementing
and advocating certain indicators at project level, where a stand-alone DHS, LSMS, MICS surveys
are not available (or possible), remains a challenge.
2.3 Budget Analysis to Track Commitments to Nutrition

Budget analysis has been increasingly undertaken as a means to monitor nutrition commitments at
national and local levels. The Scaling up for Nutrition (SUN) Secretariat works with SUN countries
and technical partners to perform financial tracking by relying on a standard methodological frame-
work for routinely and systematically collecting country budgetary data relevant to nutrition known
as the Three-Step Approach (SUN, 2015). The three phases of the approach include: (i) identification
of relevant budget-line items through a strategically created key word search; where possible, the
initial search should be related to relevant outcomes and actions as presented in national plans for
nutrition, (ii) categorisation assessing whether the identified budget-line items correspond to nutri-
tion-specific or nutrition-sensitive programs and excluding those that are found not to be relevant
(after further consultations), and (iii) weighting or applying an attributed percentage of the allo-
cated budget-line item to nutrition where the percentage is based on the step-two categorisation as
well as consultation with national experts. This Three-Step Approach allows countries to
view changes in budgetary allocations (and actual expenditures when possible) over time. While the
results do not directly allow for comparisons across countries, the Three-Step Approach is designed
to identify the gaps between cost estimations for reaching World Health Assembly (WHA) nutrition
global targets and future financing (SUN, 2015b).
In 2015, 30 out of 56 SUN Countries have applied this “three-step” approach to analyse nutrition
related expenditures within their national budgetary systems (SUN, 2015b). 16 countries identified
more than ten budget line items (averaging 23 items), while 6 countries reported more than 80 budg-
et line items. 22 countries were able to identify integrated health programmes and categorized them
as nutrition-specific budget allocations. 25 countries were able to identify nutrition-sensitive budget
allocations across more than four of the key sectors (health, agriculture, education, social protection,
and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH). 10 countries were able to identify allocations for nutri-
tion governance, covering costs for coordination, research, and nutrition information systems. Last-
ly, 7 countries were able to provide sufficient detail to review funding sources permitting a better
understanding of who is investing where.

International Journal of Population Studies | 2016, Volume 2, Issue 1 69