National Nutrition Consultant, Abuja Nigeria, 8 Months.

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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. Propose a draft mandate for the FSBDGs by considering national food, diet, and nutrition policies and commitments, in consultation with the food systems specialist and technical task team.
2. Contribute to the proposal/plan for the situation analysis and evidence review (SAER) with the intended users, rationale, overview of methods, and estimated timeframe.
3. Conduct a targeted policy and program review covering nutrition and health-related policies and programs, working closely with the national nutrition-sensitive food systems specialist. This will include:

• Defining guiding questions, scope, and methods;
• conducting a mapping and analyzing the selected policies and programs.
• 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.

4. Describe and prioritize major issues to be addressed by the FSBDGs by analyzing relevant secondary data. This will include:

• Proposing the guiding questions and methods to identify the key issues to be addressed by FSBDGs
• Identifying, selecting and analyzing nutrition and health data
• Prioritizing major nutrition and health issues using agreed on criteria
• Defining population groups and subgroups that may require special focus
• 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.

5. Review evidence on relationships between diet and health by analyzing relevant secondary data. To include:

• Proposing the research questions and methods for reviewing the evidence
• Conducting the search, extracting data and assessing quality
• Synthesizing the evidence and prepare conclusion statements
• Summarizing the findings and seeking input from the technical task team and other professionals involved in the FSBDG development;
• Revising and finalizing the document.

6. Describe diets and set preliminary diet goals and targets by analyzing relevant secondary data. To include:

• Proposing the research questions and methods to describe diet patterns
• Identifying and reviewing dietary data
• Documenting the dietary assessment methods, findings and gaps
• Proposing preliminary diet goals and targets (quantitative and/or qualitative)
• Seeking input from the technical task team and other professionals involved in the FSBDG development.
• Revising and finalizing the document.

7. Contribute to the targeted food system analysis and identification of effective interventions (to be carried out by the food systems specialist) by providing information and review comments as needed.

8. In close collaboration with the food systems specialist, put together a description of diet factors that are associated with the prioritized health and nutrition issues, as well as with the sustainability issues identified by the food systems specialist.

9. In close collaboration with the food systems specialist, put together conclusions on relevant relationships between diet-health, diet-environment, and diet-socioeconomic outcomes from the evidence.

10. After the targeted food systems analysis has been carried out by the food systems specialist, work closely with this person to prepare a proposal for revising the preliminary diet goals/targets based on feasibility and other findings.

11. With input from the technical task team and other professionals involved in the FSBDG development; revise and finalize the preliminary diet goals/targets.

12. Lead the writing of the situation analysis and evidence review report

• Compile the report using the outputs from the previous steps.
• Work closely with the food systems specialist to include the chapters to be prepared by this person, and reviewing the content.
• Integrate feedback from the technical task team, the nutrition-sensitive food systems specialists and other professionals involved in the FSBDG development process

13. Contribute to the validation workshop for the SAER, presenting the results of the work carried out above.

14. Revise and finalize the SAER report

 

Work Assignments Overview

• Propose a draft mandate for the FSBDGs by considering national food, diet, and nutrition policies and commitments, in consultation with the food systems specialist and technical task team. 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 program review covering nutrition and health-related policies and programs

Describe and prioritize major issues to be addressed by the FSBDGs by analyzing relevant secondary data

Describe diets and set preliminary diet goals and targets by analysing relevant secondary data

• Review evidence on relationships between diet and health by analysing relevant secondary data
• Describe diets and set preliminary diet goals and targets by analysing relevant secondary data

Revise and finalize the preliminary diet goals/targets

Contribute to the validation workshop for the SAER, presenting the results of the work carried out above

Revise and finalize the SAER report

Deliverables/Outputs

• Mandate for the FSBDGs by considering based on the country’s policy and institutional framework for food, diets, and nutrition

       A map of nutrition and health-related policies and programs relevant to FSBDGs

• A report on the nutrition and health-related policies and programs detailing priorities, target populations, and key entry points for FSBDGs. A profile of priority issues (where possible, describing what, who, and where for each one) and trends to be addressed by the FSBDGs A description of population groups/subgroups of focus for the FSBDGs. A description of diet factors that are associated with the prioritized health and nutrition issues, as well as with the sustainability issues identified by the food systems specialist.
• Conclusions on relevant relationships between diet-health, diet-environment, and diet-socioeconomic outcomes from the evidence. List of available data sources for diet modelling
• Description of diets and diet patterns. A preliminary set of contextualized diet goals and targets.

Revised diet targets/goals. Validated SAER report

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.