Thank you all for your contributions.
As for Uganda, I would suggest three key areas of human resource capacity, having a full implementation team in place and engaging high level decision makers.
1. Support Uganda to strengthen human resources in the nutrition secretariat for strategic oversight and coordination: In Uganda, the task of operationalize multisectoral nutrition through Uganda Nutrition Action Plan (UNAP) at national scale is a monumental undertaking that involves attention to many components of the system. The oversight and coordination of all the necessary activities – involving interactions, advocacy and negotiations with a large number of government and non-government stakeholders and organizations – requires the full-time effort from a Multisectoral Nutrition coordinator located in an institution that enables effective oversight and coordination.
2. Support the country to create a full-time implementation team to support cascading and on-going support to sub-national levels: The task of orienting and training the 115 districts and lower local government levels, and supervising and supporting them in a responsive fashion over time, requires a mobile implementation team dedicated to those functions. Currently, Uganda does not have such a team but the Country has recognized the need.
3. Effectively engage high level decision makers in government and partner organizations in addressing critical bottlenecks, through candid reporting from the technical secretariat, the use of real-time progress markers and the establishment of clear lines of accountability.
The rationale for singling out these three actions from the much larger set of challenges facing the country is that all or most of the other challenges can be addressed if there are dedicated staff and clear procedures in place to do so. The most compelling lesson from our project is that the task of building and maintaining a MSN system is much too large for the human resources currently dedicated to it. And the most encouraging lesson from is that it is well within the power, the resources and the good will of the partners in the country to alleviate this constraint. In addition to these high leverage, strategic actions, which might apply to other countries, there are some additional specific actions needed in Uganda. Some of these can be initiated or accomplished while the three strategic actions are being pursued, but all of them would be addressed in a more effective and sustainable manner if the MSN coordinator and implementation team could be put in place in a timely manner.
Specific Actions:
1. Put in place formal procedures on how things should be done. This is best done by having MSN implementation guidelines to be used at all levels (national and district implementation teams)
2. Need to have a phased work plan for the implementation of Uganda Nutrition Action Plan
3. Cultivate a culture of collaborative decision making/planning for activities and how to communicate internally (within districts, Sectors and Government, CSOs, development partners) and externally with global nutrition agencies such as SUN.
4. Need to conduct institutional capacity assessment for the implementation of MSN at the national and sub national levels
5. Build strategic partnership with all development partners supporting MSN in the country including agreement on key strategic directions for moving forward the country MSN nutrition agenda.
6. Continuous capacity building of all stakeholders involved in MSN implementation at all levels, in the areas of strategic capacity, adaptive management, documentation and sharing of experiences
I’m sorry, I focused more on Uganda, in the next sharing, I will attempt to pay attention to the global picture.
Thank you,
Jackson
Dr. Jackson Tumwine