National Consultant- Nutrition-Sensitive Food Systems, Abuja Nigeria, 8 Months.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

Click here to experience our country through the perspective of our colleagues by clicking on this Link

For every child, Hope

In Nigeria, UNICEF works in a complex humanitarian and development setting to fulfill and protect children’s rights in partnership with government, civil society, children, and families.  UNICEF Nigeria is one of the largest UNICEF Country Offices globally – click the link to learn more about UNICEF in Nigeria: https://www.unicef.org/nigeria/.

Organizational Context and Purpose for the job

Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs) are a powerful tool for shaping healthier diets, improving feeding practices, and influencing the broader food system. When well-developed, they offer evidence-based, context-specific recommendations that guide not only individual choices but also inform policies and programs across sectors- including health, nutrition, agriculture, and education.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), FBDGs provide “context-specific advice and principles on healthy diets and lifestyles, rooted in sound evidence and responsive to a country’s public health and nutrition priorities, food production and consumption patterns, socio-cultural influences, food composition data, and food accessibility, among other factors.” While FBDGs are designed for the general population, special attention must be given to population groups with increased nutritional vulnerability, particularly:

• Young children aged 6 months to 2 years, whose diets during this critical window directly impact survival, growth, and lifelong development,
• Women of reproductive age, including those who are pregnant or breastfeeding, whose nutritional status influences both their own health and that of their children.

FBDGs represent a valuable opportunity to improve outcomes for these groups by integrating age- and gender-specific recommendations within broader national guidance. When incorporated into public policies and programs, they can help transform food systems by improving what foods are produced and made available, shaping healthier food environments, and promoting positive food practices. The new methodology being developed by FAO helps to ensure this by integrating the consideration of constraints, opportunities, and interconnections throughout the food system during the dietary guidelines development. Dietary guidelines developed following this methodology, “food systems-based dietary guidelines”, result in a suite of products which include technical recommendations consisting of dietary recommendations and corresponding multilevel, evidence-based food systems interventions covering food supply, food environment, and consumer behavior.

UNICEF identifies three key action areas that must be addressed simultaneously in food systems for children: improving children’s foods, food environments, and food practices. Achieving impact across these areas requires collaboration across sectors, including public policy, private sector engagement, and shifts in social norms and individual behaviors. FSBDGs can support all three domains by providing a shared reference point for coordinated action.

For infants and young children (6–23 months) or for pregnant and lactating women. Furthermore, their development did not include the consideration of food system-related factors that would affect children’s diets. As young children’s diets are very often determined by the family diet and access to and use of nutrient-dense foods at household level, the initial situation analysis and evidence review (SAER) to guide the FSBDGs development will consider the food availability, access and other food system aspects for diets for all the population, with a special focus on children over 6 months and women of reproductive age.

Opportunities for strengthening the dietary guidelines:

• Develop child-specific dietary guidance for ages 6–23 months and for school-age children, building on UNICEF and WHO recommendations.
• Integrate guidance for women of reproductive age, including during pregnancy and lactation, to improve maternal nutrition and intergenerational outcomes.
• Link the dietary guidelines to existing multisectoral platforms, such as the National Council on Nutrition and the National Strategic Plan of Action for Nutrition (NSPAN).
• Use the dietary guidelines to ensure policy coherence and coordinated action across sectors such as agriculture, trade, education, and environment, thereby promoting the production and accessibility of nutrient-rich foods produced in a sustainable manner.
• Strengthen community-level delivery of dietary guidance through health workers and social behavior change campaigns.

The purpose of this consultancy is to contribute to the development of Food-Based Dietary Guidelines for Nigeria in close collaboration with technical partners from the UN, other organizations and the Nigerian government.

Scope of work:

1. Contribute to the definition of the Food-Based Dietary Guidelines mandate by identifying national policies and commitments that can support the inclusion of different aspects of sustainability.

2. Propose entry points for sustainability to be included in the mandate, as per country policies and data availability.

3. Help to identify additional stakeholders who should be involved in the Food-Based Dietary Guidelines development process, to ensure sustainability-related aspects identified above are well covered.

4. Contribute to the proposal/plan for the situation analysis and evidence review (SAER) with the intended users, rationale, overview of methods, and estimated timeframe.

5. Conduct a targeted policy and programme review covering food systems-related policies and programmes, working closely with the national nutrition specialist. This will include looking at policies and programmes from sustainability-related disciplines, such as agroecology, climate resilience, social equity, and indigenous and traditional food systems, but will exclude health and nutrition sectors. This task involves:

• Proposing a food system framework to guide the analysis, with cross-cutting consideration of socio-cultural, economic, and environmental dimensions;
• Obtaining consensus on the food systems framework to be used, from the Technical Task Team and other professionals involved;
• Defining guiding questions, scope, metrics, and methods;
• Conducting a mapping and analysing the selected policies and programmes;
• Summarizing the findings and seeking input from the technical task team and other professionals involved in the Food-Based Dietary Guidelines development;
• Revising and finalizing the document.

6. Conduct a targeted analysis along the food system by analysing relevant secondary data. This will be guided by findings from the work carried out by the National Nutrition Specialist and the Technical Task Team, which will set draft dietary goals and targets for the population groups. This task will include:

• Using the food system framework selected, to guide the analysis, with cross-cutting consideration of socio-cultural, economic, and environmental dimensions;
• Conducting the targeted food system analysis, considering food systems’ constraints, opportunities, and interactions;
• Presenting the results of the analysis to the Technical Task Team and other professionals involved;
• Revising as needed and finalizing.

7. Contribute to the description of diet factors associated with the prioritized health and nutrition issues, as well as with the sustainability issues identified.

8. Contribute to the conclusions on relevant relationships between diet-health, diet-environment, and diet-socioeconomic outcomes from the evidence.

9. Contribute to the revision of the diet goals/targets, taking into consideration trade-offs involved from a food systems perspective.

10. Review the evidence on effective interventions across the food system by analysing relevant secondary data, which can support each of the dietary goals/targets that have been established:

• Proposing research questions and methods for reviewing the evidence on food systems interventions, and obtaining consensus from the Technical Task Team and other professionals involved;
• Conducting the review and extracting the data;
• Synthesizing the evidence, prioritizing interventions, and preparing draft recommendations covering interventions across food systems, food environments, and consumer behaviours;
• Identifying potential major consequences to sustainability-related outcomes from implementing specific interventions;
• Presenting the results of the analysis to the Technical Task Team and other professionals involved;
• Revising as needed and finalizing.

11. Contribute to the situation analysis and evidence review report by a) drafting the chapters relating to the food systems analysis, b) reviewing other chapters, c) considering the report with a food systems lens, so that the SAER can be useful to those beyond health and nutrition experts

12. Contribute to the validation of the SAER report, in particular, by identifying potential experts to invite, and during the validation workshop, presenting the work carried out above, and explaining potential tensions and trade-offs between different outcomes of proposed interventions.

Work Assignments Overview

Propose entry points for sustainability to be included in the mandate, as per country policies and data availability.

Help to identify additional stakeholders who should be involved in the FSBDGs development process

Contribute to the proposal/plan for the situation analysis and evidence review (SAER) with the intended users, rationale, overview of methods, and estimated timeframe

Conduct a targeted policy and programme review covering food systems-related policies and programmes, working closely with the national nutrition specialist

Contribute to the description of diet factors associated with the prioritized health and nutrition issues, as well as with the sustainability issues identified

Contribute to the revision of the diet goals/targets, taking into consideration trade-offs involved from a food systems perspective.

Contribute to the conclusions on relevant relationships between diet-health, diet-environment, and diet-socioeconomic outcomes from the evidence.

Contribute to the description of diet factors associated with the prioritized health and nutrition issues, as well as with the sustainability issues identified

Contribute to the conclusions on relevant relationships between diet-health, diet-environment, and diet-socioeconomic outcomes from the evidence.

Contribute to the revision of the diet goals/targets, taking into consideration trade-offs involved from a food systems perspective.

Review the evidence on effective interventions across the food system by analysing relevant secondary data, which can support each of the dietary goals/targets that have been established

Contribute to the situation analysis and evidence review report, so that the SAER can be useful to those beyond health and nutrition experts

Deliverables/Outputs

• A record of inputs provided from a food systems perspective to the draft mandate for the FSBDGs, including on potential entry points for sustainability.
• A map of food systems-related policies and programmes relevant for the Food-Based Dietary Guidelines, covering sustainability-related disciplines.
• The food system framework is proposed to guide the analysis, together with justifications for the choice.
• A report on the food systems-related policies and programmes detailing priorities, target populations, and key entry points for Food-Based Dietary Guidelines.
• A report describing the food system factors contributing to key diet issues.
• Comments provided on the feasibility of preliminary diet goals and targets from a food systems perspective.
• Conclusions on relevant relationships between diet-health, diet-environment, and diet-socioeconomic outcomes from the evidence.
• A record of inputs provided to the Nutrition Specialist, who will be putting together the description of diet factors associated with the prioritized health and nutrition issues and sustainability issues.
• A record of inputs provided to the Nutrition Specialist, who will be putting together conclusions on relevant relationships between diet-health, diet-environment, and diet-socioeconomic outcomes from the evidence.
• Report regarding effective interventions across the food system, including key interactions and gaps to consider.
• SAER chapters on the food systems analysis and interventions

 

Education:

Advanced degree in Nutrition, Dietetics, Food Science, Public Health, or any discipline related to Nutrition

 

Experience:

• Excellent knowledge of nutrition, food security, and the health system in Nigeria is mandatory.
• Knowledge and experience in nutrition, food security, or health-related surveys and assessments in Nigeria.
• Knowledge and experience in analyzing scientific data and writing scientific reports, including evidence in publishing papers
• Excellent interpersonal, communication, and presentation skills to proactively establish and maintain working relations, and to promote synergies with other stakeholders.
• Ability to take the initiatives and work independently and systematically.
• Knowledge and experience on FBDG.
• Knowledge and experience with the development of nutrition and food security guidelines.
• Experience in working with the UN and NGOs can be useful.
• Strong skills in using Microsoft software (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint)
• In-depth understanding of various types of data and their key sources, and limitations
• Data quality assessment skills
• Ability to interpret data critically
• Good data visualization skills
• Ability to communicate results and gaps to support decision making
• Knowledge in using statistical packages and interpreting statistical data.
• Experience with framing research questions
• Experience in systematic searching, screening, and selection, including using search engines
• In-depth understanding of nutrition study designs
• Experience with assessing bias in nutrition research and selecting the most appropriate tools

 

Language Requirements:

Fluency in English Language. Knowledge of language of duty station would be an added advantage.

 

Please submit your all-inclusive financial and technical proposal along with the application. Application without these will not be entertained. 

 

For every Child, you demonstrate… 

UNICEF’s values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS). 

To view our competency framework, please visit here. 

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment. 

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check. 

 

Remarks:  

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process. 

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties in accordance with local or other applicable laws. 

The selected candidate is solely responsible for ensuring that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.