In Agriculture, SUN Alliance strengthens the coordination between nutrition actors within this sector, through tracking results and aligning strategies, programs and resources of its members with country plans to eliminate all forms of Malnutrition.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank suggest that agricultural growth is one of the ways of fighting (child) malnutrition.
Over the last decade, Rwanda has made consistent progress in dealing with health related challenges through strategy focused interventions on reaching high coverage of basic public health services. Nonetheless significant decrease in prevalence of stunting in children under five (51% DHS 2005 to 38% DHS 2015), wasting in children under five (3.9% DHS 2005 compared to 2.2% DHS 2015) and underweight (18% DHS 2005 to 9% DHS 2015), malnutrition remains high especially stunting in children under 5.
Since establishment, the Alliance has over the years been advocating for and communicating with Civil Society organizations and other nutrition actors implementing agriculture programs to;
Incorporate explicit nutrition objectives and indicators in the design of agricultural policies, strategies and programs, showing a pathway on how agriculture contributes to improved nutrition.
Accelerate funding for nutrition-sensitive approaches while strengthening the implementation capacity of nutrition actors including at local levels.
Tackle recurring food shortages in the months preceding the harvest or during climate variability in order to reduce seasonal spikes
Ensure that efforts to improve dietary practices become a standard part of food security-oriented agricultural programs.
Track and seek to avoid any potentially negative impact of agriculture programs on gender equality.
Ensure multi-sectoral coordination and mapping out of multi-sectoral causes of under nutrition, such as social protection
This implies therefore, that the potential impacts of agricultural activities on health and nutrition extend across a number of sectors. Thus, due the central role of agriculture on reducing malnutrition, SUN Alliance Rwanda is focused on its intensive coordination, Social Mobilization, advocacy and Communication (SMAC), and tracking of results of its members in the sector for future planning.