USAID Advancing Nutrition Project in Nigeria has engaged stakeholders with a view to ending child wasting and severe acute malnutrition in Nigerian children.
According to data by UNICEF, 2 Million children in Nigeria are severely acutely malnourished, with only 2 in 10 having access to the right care and services that would save their lives.
Speaking during a stakeholder engagement in Abuja during the week, Pauline Adha, the Maternal Infant and Young Child Nutrition Advisor for the USAID advancing nutrition project in Nigeria said the objective of the stakeholder meeting was to improve on financing and advocacy, to strengthen the collaboration between local producers of nutritional commodities; the Ready-to-Use Foods (RUFs) and Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTFs), and government Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs.
Adah said the overall goal was to help create an enabling environment for the local producers to thrive, having identified the challenges of price among others.
“We are here to see how we can liaise and discuss with regulatory agencies because the challenges shared by the local manufacturers after our visit to them is that the cost of production is high due to taxes.
“So we are looking at a situation where the government and its regulatory agencies take note that these producers are producing life-saving foods for our children, and you know that for the coverage of treatment of severe acute malnutrition to increase, and for government and partners to be able to patronise the made in Nigeria Ready to Use Foods for malnutrition, the cost has to drop.
“We are here hoping that at the end of the day, we can get solutions and get the regulatory agencies to key in as part of their own support for the Nigerian child; key in and probably give tax waivers to these producers, reduce or if possible, take away some unnecessary or high taxes from these producers, give them some waivers so that at the end of the day, the end product would cost less,” said Adah.
Also speaking, the General Manager of Nutri K, one of the producers of ready-to-use therapeutic foods, Abdoulkader Boukari bemoaned the high cost of the nutritional commodity, attributing it to the cost of raw materials – how it could be lowered in other to make the commodity affordable for treatment of more children.
He lamented that a carton of the RUTF commodity in Nigeria was 20 per cent more expensive than its price when imported.
He said, “So the idea is first of all, how we can reduce the cost of this RUTF in the country and how also we can meet all the demand of our customers like UNICEF World Food Program, and even be able to export the RUTF to neighbouring countries. “We started to do that but because of the price, we cannot compete with the overseas companies who are doing the same thing. “
He therefore pleaded to relevant authorities to consider a waiver on import duty, to allow for the importation of raw materials, for the production of dairy products which serve as a source of protein for the treatment of malnourished children.
The representative of the Directors of Industrial Department, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Ojiude Emmanuel Chinonso highlighted the problem of purchasing power as a key factor, stating that to solve the imminent issue of accessibility and affordability of ready-to-use foods, Nigeria has to look inwards, to ensure that the nutritional commodities are produced locally.
He said the Ministry’s main aim was to explore, develop and expand industries in Nigeria through waivers, concessions among others, to make sure that the products are found locally. “We’ve had a lot of programs, one of which is the backward integration program whereby we ask investors or industrialists to look inwards. Some of those commodities which we import heavily, which we can produce, we can source locally.”
“We give them some incentives through the fiscal policy measures so that over time, they can invest, to ensure that these raw materials are sourced locally, because if they are sourced locally, we have a kind of reduced pressure on the forex and this will help make our own products cheaper, and they can venture into the Global Value Chain.
“So it is a key thing for us because if we get it done from the cradle, which is on the production side, the issue about nutrition and low purchasing power will be a thing of the past. If we get it done by producing locally, sourcing most of the raw materials locally, I think we would have made over 70% gain in solving this problem of malnutrition,” he further stated.
He expressed dissatisfaction with the top-to-bottom approach which players imbibed previously, stating that in other to get it right, players in the Health and Agric sectors alike, have to embrace a bottom-up approach; liaise with industries which are in the field, before engaging MDAs and other relevant government players.
In their goodwill messages, producers of the nutritional commodities at the meeting which included DABS, Ariel Foods, and Emzor among others while lending their voices, called on government MDAs and other players to look into the challenges borough forward and support them, to achieve lasting solutions, to improve on the coverage of treatment of malnourished children in Nigeria.
