Tracking nutrition finances in SUN countries

Trust, transparency, and accountability are core values of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement.  Since the inception of the SUN Movement, we have been working to strengthen processes to better track nutrition-specific and sensitive investments to ensure that all investments in nutrition are effectively spent for lasting impact.

Since 2015, many SUN Movement countries have used the SUN budget analysis method to identify valuable insights into the nature of government spending and allocations towards nutrition-specific and sensitive areas. The results of five years of hard work from everyone involved has been turned into a first-ever comparative nutrition investment database, ensuring that all this valuable information is available at your fingertips.

How to use the SUN Movement nutrition investment database

1. Getting started

https://idb.scalingupnutrition.org/

Take some time to explore this tool! To begin, look at the the country filter option via which you can click on any SUN country where a budget analysis has been  performed. You can focus on one country or several. Once you have  determined your selected countries, the category filters have interface options allowing you to explore data from this budget analysis exercise. You can see on-budget allocations across sectors and centre your attention on a specific type of nutrition-relevant programme in a particular sector.

2. Working with sectoral nutrition allocations

For example, if you are interested in interventions related to drinking water in Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Afghanistan, this tool would show you what these SUN countries have identified in their national budgets and invested-in.

3. What does this database (not) show?

This tool is a mirror for accountability and trust. It uses a country’s local currency. A deflator is also available, allowing you to understand the real term changes across time.  Once you determine your area of interest, there is a file export feature (in excel format) so you can download the data. Then you can apply your USD estimations and run the analyses  of interest to you.

This database is a mirror of what stakeholders in-country have come together and agreed on, while using the SUN budget analysis method. The tool appreciates what the method does and does not do. This method for tracking public finances for nutrition allows a country with buy-in from stakeholders to determine what they feel is nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive and will enable them to monitor these programmes across time.

4. No ‘one fits all’ approach to financial tracking for nutrition

There are many ways of tracking nutrition financing that is used by SUN countries. At the SUN Movement Secretariat, we provide support to whichever way a SUN country deems as the best or most suitable approach to tracking financing for nutrition. We want stakeholders to agree together on the “particularities” of the method used and to get stakeholder buy-in on that approach. While acknowledging that we work with, and support countries to analyse their budgeting for nutrition in whichever way they see as most “fit-for-purpose,” only the results from the SUN budget analysis exercise filter into this data tool.

5. Extracting information 

The database has another important feature: you can also see and download charts and comparisons of the selected data, to help you in your work.

Contact details

When exploring this new tool or if you experience any problems, contact William Knechtel at william.knechtel@scalingupnutrition.org