The Civil Society – Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN) congratulates the Gates Foundation (GF) on its remarkable 25-year journey of advancing health, development and equity across the globe. Over the last decade, CS-SUNN has been privileged to be a trusted partner in this vision—leveraging the foundation’s support to champion sustainable nutrition policies, influence decision-making and improve nutrition outcomes in Nigeria and beyond.
The 2025 Nigeria PAC Partners Mid-Year Meeting, convened by the Gates Foundation in Abuja, provided yet another opportunity for robust dialogue, strategic learning and cross-partner collaboration. This year’s meeting came at a defining moment in the foundation’s work—midway through its accelerated 20-year timeline toward closure in 2045—where urgency, integration and local ownership took center stage.
CS-SUNN’s active participation at the meeting reinforced its long-standing role as a strategic voice for nutrition in Nigeria. The alliance, including C-WINS, Pathfinder and GAIN are members of the Child Survival Group Cluster funded by the Gates Foundation. CS-SUNN’s Programme Manager, Ridwan Awosanya contributed significantly to the Child Survival Subgroup presentation, sharing advocacy insights, progress milestones and challenges from its flagship interventions.
Key Accomplishments: Driving Sustainable Nutrition Financing and Governance
Over the years and particularly under the Foundation’s-supported interventions, CS-SUNN has recorded the following notable achievements in influencing nutrition policy and financing in Nigeria and this was reported at the PAC meeting alongside other Sub-Group Member Organizations:
- Sustaining Nutrition Budget Lines: Through strategic collaboration with key nutrition line Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), the Office of the Vice President (OVP) including partners in Nigeria’s nutrition landscape, CS-SUNN has advocated for nutrition budget lines, ensuring policy and budgetary prioritization for nutrition at the highest levels.
- Securing Government Commitments: Advocacy efforts have led to increased appropriations for nutrition in state budgets and improved releases and utilization of allocated funds. Budget tracking analysis in Lagos, Kaduna, Niger, Nasarawa and Kano states demonstrates measurable improvements in fund flow and execution.
- High-Level Legislative Engagements: In collaborative efforts, CS-SUNN successfully convened legislative retreats bringing together Speakers and key state legislators alongside top executive officials to deliberate on sustainable domestic resource mobilization for nutrition financing in focal states. These dialogues laid the groundwork for stronger legislative-executive alignment on nutrition priorities.
Presenting the Realities: Challenges and System Gaps
At the PAC meeting, the Child Survival Sub-Group also highlighted operational challenges affecting nutrition accountability systems in Nigeria. Notably, the Performance Management System (PMS)—a digital platform for nutrition data tracking—faces hurdles due to the limited IT skills of some government staff, affecting seamless navigation and data uploads. Additionally, intermittent downtime of the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning’s server threatens the system’s efficiency.
The Road Ahead: Strategic Priorities for the Next 12–18 Months
Looking forward, the sub-group outlined of achievable priorities amongst others including:
- Sustained National Nutrition Funding: Continuing collaboration and advocacies to maintain budget lines and secure optimal funding.
- Produce State-Level Nutrition Investment Cases: Evidence-driven nutrition investment cases for Lagos, Kaduna, Niger, Nasarawa, and Kano to guide policy and resource allocation.
- Support the Nutrition-774 Agenda: Providing technical assistance on advocacy and visibility for the Federal Government’s grassroots nutrition financing initiative covering all 774 LGAs.
The PAC Partners’ Gallery Walk: Showcasing CS-SUNN’s Transformational Impact
CS-SUNN was also a prominent feature in the PAC Gallery Walk presentation, where its poster titled “Transforming Nutrition Accountability in Nigeria through Technology: The Performance Management System (PMS)” drew significant attention. The stand served as a learning hub, where participants engaged with CS-SUNN’s Senior Communications Officer, Lilian Okafor, who narrated the PMS’ journey—its inception, evolution and role in driving data-informed decision-making for nutrition in Nigeria.
Visual Stories of Impact!
We are sharing other diagrammatic representations of CS-SUNN’s impact, made possible through the Gate Foundation’s funding support and collaborations with partners such as Nutrition International, UNICEF, FHI360’s Alive & Thrive and others in Nigeria.
A Shared Vision for Nigeria’s Nutrition Future
The 2025 PAC meeting set the tone for collective action across maternal, newborn and child survival; health system strengthening; agriculture; macroeconomic reform and nutrition. Discussions called for accelerated, coordinated and locally driven solutions to address malnutrition and other health/developmental related challenges in Nigeria.
For nutrition, the Gates Foundation reaffirmed its commitment to expanding Multiple Micronutrient Supplementation (MMS) for pregnant women and supporting fortification of staple foods. Integration with agriculture and social protection systems was emphasized to improve food access and dietary diversity at household level.
Sessions spotlighted high-impact innovations, from portable ultrasound devices; low-cost Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machines for newborns, bundled postpartum hemorrhage interventions to sensor technology for vital signs monitoring. The Child Survival Subgroup—of which CS-SUNN is a key member—aligned these innovations with existing advocacy, emphasizing that effective implementation depends on governance, financing and community ownership.
A Decade of Partnership, a Lifetime of Impact!
As CS-SUNN marks 10 years of partnership and the Gates Foundation 25 years of Impact, it celebrates not just the successes recorded, but also the enduring relationships built—relationships that have positioned nutrition as a priority in Nigeria’s political and development agenda. With the 2025 GF PAC meeting, a reaffirmation has been reawakened with shared purpose and a blueprint for the next chapter of Nigeria’s nutrition story. CS-SUNN extends its gratitude to the GF for the opportunity to contribute to this agenda and looks forward to deepening collaboration in pursuit of a Nigeria where everyone has food and is nutrition secure.
Though the forum closed with a collective resolve to intensify advocacy, integrate innovations into health and nutrition systems and mobilize resources for scalable and sustainable solutions; CS-SUNN’s journey continues—with a sharpened focus on equity, accountability and resilience within and beyond Nigeria’s nutrition landscape.
