Landscape Analysis of Nutrition-sensitive Agriculture Policy Development in Senegal.

Background: Unlocking the agricultural potential of Africa offers a genuine opportunity to address malnutrition and drive development of the continent.

Objective: Using Senegal as a case study, to identify gaps and opportunities to strengthen agricultural policies with nutrition-sensitive approaches.

Methods: We carried out a systematic analysis of 13 policy documents that related to food production, agriculture, food security, or nutrition.

Determinants of malnutrition in Senegal: individual, household, community variables, and their interaction.

The relationship between poverty and nutrition is a two-sided one: on the one hand, economic growth (which is generally associated with an eradication of poverty) leads to reduced malnutrition. On the other hand, nutrition is one of the key ingredients for human capital formation, which in turn represents one of the fundamental factors of growth. There are numerous studies that show the correlates of malnutrition using both household- and community-level variables.

Effectiveness of a community-based intervention to improve nutrition in young children in Senegal: a difference in difference analysis.

There are few studies of community growth promotion as a means of addressing malnutrition that are based on longitudinal analysis of large-scale programmes with adequate controls to construct a counterfactual. The current study uses a difference in difference comparison of cohorts to assess the impact on the proportion of underweight children who lived in villages receiving services provided by the Senegal Nutrition Enhancement Project between 2004 and 2006. The project, designed to extend nutrition and growth promotion intervention into rural areas through non-governmental organisation service providers, significantly lowered the risk of a child having a weight more than 2 sd below international norms.