Kenya Chappel | Budgeting to beat malnutrition

Across Eastern and Southern Africa, governments already know what it takes to reduce child malnutrition. They know which interventions work - from treating severely malnourished children to helping families afford enough nutritious food. 

So why is the problem still so big?

Because knowing what to do and getting the cash to actually do it are two different things. The money gets stuck and is difficult to track.

Since 2022, we have partnered with the UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office on the Public Finance for Children - Nutrition (PF4C-N) initiative. The focus is simple: we strengthen the systems that decide whether nutrition programmes get funded, delivered, and sustained.

Why public finance holds the key

Africa still carries a heavy share of the world's malnutrition burden. Stunting and wasting are not just statistics; they are millions of children not getting a fair start.

You would think the money to fix this would be easy to find. It is not. Nutrition financing is often less than what is required, scattered across multiple ministries, and hard to track. 

Because nutrition sits across health, agriculture, education, social protection and water, sanitation and hygiene, responsibility gets spread thin. A plan might be agreed in one building, but the budget lives in another. The result is limited visibility of nutrition spending within the budget, weak alignment between plans and budgets, and inconsistent tracking of expenditure. 

This is the gap PF4C-N was built to close. We support governments to strengthen how they plan, budget, execute, and monitor public spending on nutrition, so that nutrition commitments are backed by real budget allocations and delivered on the ground. 

From training to traction

What began as a regional learning programme grew into something bigger: online courses, multi-country workshops in English, French and Portuguese, and deep-dive technical support for individual countries. 

Between 2022 and 2025, PF4C-N saw over 25 countries participate in the programme. More than 500 government officials rolled up their sleeves with us. And through UNICEF's Agora platform, over 9,000 learners globally have picked up these tools.

But the real story is what they did next. Ministries are now talking to each other. Nutrition is appearing as its own line in budgets. Spending is being tracked properly.

Take Ethiopia.Following the PF4C-N course, the government introduced nutrition budget monitoring across seven ministries. They built a tracker into their financial management system. Now, for the first time, they can see exactly where nutrition money goes, year after year.

Why this work can't wait

This has never been more urgent. Aid budgets are under pressure. Governments face competing demands with limited resources. Hoping for more funding is not a strategy. Strengthening the systems that handle the public resources we already have is the only way forward.

Over the coming months, we will publish our impact report, update global manuals, and release a free online course with practical case studies.

For us at Genesis, this work connects policy, finance, and implementation. A child's future is shaped not only in clinics and communities, but also in budget ceilings, classification systems, and procurement processes that determine whether services are delivered at scale.