Solving Kenya’s malnutrition paradox

Malnutrition is a threat to social and economic progress in Kenya.

The biggest paradox of all is that Kenya is faced by the multiple burdens of malnutrition, under-nutrition and over nutrition, which cost the Government and the taxpayer a lot of money.

Over nutrition - obesity and overweight - puts an individual at a higher chance of developing non-communicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes and cardiac arrest, among many others.

On the other side, under-nutrition is equally costly to our economy. As of now, one in four children is shorter for their age (stunted), which is an alarming situation.

This means a quarter of children in Kenya may never see the light of success in their lives.

Effects of stunting are gross; the child can never grow to their full potential due to the small brain.

Effects of stunting cannot be reversed as they are permanent. Investing in a costly education system might never earn the child success.

Vision 2030, which involves transforming Kenya into a middle-income country whose citizens enjoy a high quality of life, might remain a dream if we do not invest in the lives of pregnant mothers, infants and young ones.

Good nutrition is an investment to the grey matter infrastructure whose returns will be realised by having a population of critical thinkers, achievers in the global arena, issue-driven and richer society as they are more independent.

The political class should take a deliberate decision to end the cyclic hunger situation in Kenya, which scales up the level of malnutrition.

It is possible to have zero malnutrition in Kenya if our efforts are concerted in ending this monster. Kenya should fight to stop being amongst the worst performing countries on malnutrition.

Every penny counts by investing in nutrition. Research has shown that, globally, for every dollar invested on nutrition, there is an economic return of $13.

In the Kenyan context, the returns are even higher, where the returns are $16 per dollar invested in nutrition (Global Nutrition Report 2016). GNR 2016 further points out that the Government only allocated 0.6 per cent to nutrition-sensitive activities.

This is very low compared to the magnitude of the problem. With devolution, the counties have allocated dismal amounts of budget while others cannot be traced.

Therefore, it is important for all policy makers and resource allocators to note that nutrition is an investment, not a liability.

Globally, malnutrition accounts for over $3 trillion loss in productivity and health costs.

To date, allocation of nutrition resources has been grim. A new pool of knowledge shows nutrition has high economic returns, thus one of the best buys in development.

In the recent cost-analysis study, which was developed by Results for Development in collaboration with the World bank group, Thousand Days supported by Bill and Melinda Gates and CIFF showed that there is a nutrition funding gap globally of $7 billion per year necessary for scaling up nutrition-specific intervention. This is to translate into approximately $70 billion in the next ten years.

However, there are strategies that are proposed to scale up funding by 3.5 per cent with concerted efforts between the donors and the Government among other partners.

The Government should contribute at least $700 million annually from 2016 for a period of 10 years. This would translate into $7 billion, which would account for approximately 3 per cent of the health budgets.

In the Kenyan context, this will be an increase from the 0.6 per cent budgetary allocation.

Donor increase in funding should be by 2.8 per cent up to 2021 and later tune it to 1.8 per cent by 2025 as domestic resource mobilisation continues for the purpose of ownership.