Editorial

This seventh issue of Nutrition Exchange introduces an exciting new phase in the publication's development, as ENN will now be publishing NEX twice a year and will bring together experiences and learning from Scaling up Nutrition (SUN) Movement countries as well as other content. This has been made possible by DFID funding to ENN to provide knowledge management (KM) services to SUN countries–particularly those that are fragile and conflict-affected. The SUN Movement is diverse, bringing together governments, UN agencies, businesses, donors, civil society organisations and individuals, and this diversity is evident at country level, with each Movement country adapting nutrition scale-up approaches based on their needs and their challenges. ENN supports the documentation of the rich and varied experiences of nutrition scale up in these countries in order to share innovations, learning and good practice.

For this issue, ENN's new team of regional KM specialists (RKMS) have worked with national actors to support the development of original articles focusing on current nutrition issues in East Africa, West Africa and Asia. This has produced a rich variety of experiences from these corners of the world. The RKMS have generated articles either through one-on-one interviews or by supporting authors to write their articles. This process takes time: every original article in this edition (as with all the previous ones) is the end product of a close collaboration between NEX editors, RKMS and authors. For a number of contributors to NEX, it may be the first time they have written for publication. There are eight original articles in this first SUN-focused issue of NEX. The Movement's influence and networks are growing in many SUN countries, and the process is captured in this publication, including in an article from Tanzania (on page 9) that describes the advocacy work by the local civil society network, PANITA (Partnership for Nutrition in Tanzania), with the country’s politicians to raise the profile of nutrition, and an interview with Senegal’s SUN focal point that describes success in increasing the national nutrition budget (page 13). Civil society efforts feature strongly in this issue, but efforts from other sectors are also covered, such as government initiatives at a national level, with the passage of Kenya’s Food and NutritionSecurity Bill (page 11); Odisha state’s efforts to address anaemia through scaling up fortified rice in school meals (page 22); UN collaborations (the experience of REACH in strengthening the SUN Movement in Burkina Faso (page 17); and the launch of SUN business networks in Nigeria and Niger (page 15).

 

Another exciting development is the blossoming of south-to-south collaborations: we have two examples of such lesson sharing in this publication. Nepal's success in reducing