Botswana is the 55th Country to join the SUN Movement!

In May 2015, Tom Arnold, SUN Movement Coordinator ad interim welcomed Botswana as the 55^th country to join the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement. A letter of commitment was received from the Minister of Agriculture, Patrick Pule Ralotsia and shows the high level commitment of the government towards ensuring the people of Botswana can realise their right to good food and nutrition.

In the letter of commitment, the Minister recognises progress made to date towards food and nutrition security and also highlights areas where progress must be made. These include;

• Improving the nutrition sensitivity of efforts in agriculture such as improving processing and storage to retain nutritional value, promoting dietary diversity and promoting the consumption of nutritionally rich foods
• Harnessing nutrition sensitive expertise across food systems, agricultural production, enterprise, community engagement and health and involving experts in health and nutrition with policy development and review
• Improving coordination between ministries where objectives of nutrition, agriculture and health are intrinsically related and mutually reinforcing
• Setting clear and defined metrics to guide operational programmes towards common goals and to monitor, measure and evaluate their contributions to diet and health

Botswana joins 35 other countries from Africa that are scaling up nutrition across the continent and is eager to contribute to, and learn from, successful experiences across the movement. Botswana also looks forward to harnessing support from the international community to effectively scale up nutrition.