Ajinomoto
Nutrition for Growth (N4G) commitment
Reported progress
Assessment
Nutrition policy (28,000)
No response
Maternal health/breastfeeding (3,000)
No response
2015–2017: Nutrition improvement of 200,000 weaning children, 100,000 pregnant and lactating mothers, and 250,000 school-age children, through Koko Plus supplement (Ghana Nutrition Improvement Project).
As of April 2017, The Ajinomoto Foundation (TAF) has been established, and Ghana Nutrition Improvement Project (GNIP) was handed over from Ajinomoto Co., Inc. to the Foundation. TAF will contribute to decrease stunting ratio form 21% (2018) to 14% (2025) as national target in Ghana through improving nutrition status of infants above 6 months by overcoming the effects of Covid19 with nutritious supplement, “KOKO Plus” for their complementary foods. The project GNIP has been successfully expanding, under the great efforts of TAF and various stakeholders, and Ajinomoto Co., Inc. continues to support the project of TAF as a donor.
To improve the nutrition status of infants, it is critical how to make "Behavior Change" of caregivers. The caregivers (mostly mothers) rely on Community Health Nurses of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) about health advises, and TAF proposed GHS to have Public-Private-Partnership to make their behavior changes by developing effective nutrition education tools together, and introduce "KOKO Plus" through the nurses. In September 2018, Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) between TAF and GHS was firstly signed and started collaborative activities, and the MOC was extended in August 2020 to continue the partnership.
Through the partnership with GHS, we have been creating 1) ecosystem for nutrition integral to Universal Health Coverage (UHC), and 2) sustainable nutritious food value chain for long-term nutrition intervention by market-based approach model.
What we currently focus on are:
- aim to expand the business to be sustainable scale for Ghanaian local companies to have big social impacts through partnership with the public sectors. Our progress of the expansion of collaboration area with GHS is 13% of total number of districts in FY19 to 39% in FY21.
- Ended the project with World Food Programme during 2019 to 2021 successfully.
- Strengthen evidences with local and international academia to prove the effectiveness of the project. TAF has been providing practical and sustainable model with various partnerships with stakeholders.
- Starting another project with World Food Programme in April 2022 to extend market based approach (Create behavior changes of caregivers to purchase nutritional foods by themselves based on the Social Behavior Change Communication by GHS nutritionists and nurses: SBCC) from 2districts to 90districts (45times). Moreover, in addition to scale up of current model (Market based approach together with SBCC) for weaning children, we have been starting new technological innovation for promoting effective SBCC by cross-industry and Ghana-Japan governments’ collaborating co-creation project (which is called African Health and Wellbeing Initiative :AfHWIN) to improve not only weaning children bat also pregnant women and lactating mothers’ health and nutrition which was not covered for our infants-targeted product (KOKO Plus). https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2022-05-27/the-ajinomoto-foundation-sysmex-and-nec-initiate-a-cross
-Weaning children to reach：20,000 in FY18, increased to 90,000 in FY21 (estimated with no. of sachets of “KOKO Plus” delivered in each year).
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) summarized Case Study of our Public-Private-Partnership between TAF and GHS, and published the article with their flame of P.ACT (Partnership Co-Design Toolkit). It can provide great lessons learned not only for this partnership, but for other public and private sectors what is the critical point and how the partnership can be improved through the workshop. https://d-lab.mit.edu/resources/publications/ghana-nutrition-improvement-project-co-designing-pact-tackle-infant
Reported progress shows that the total number of weaning children aided (90,000) is lower than the amount committed. There is no information regarding pregnant and lactating mothers or school-age children. Therefore, fewer than half of the individual commitment components are assessed to be on course.