By Gitahi Ngunyi
Kenya’s nutrition expert, Edgar Onyango has been elected Chairman of the East & Southern Africa Civil Society Nutrition Network.
Onyango was elected during the network’s Annual General Meeting held in Nairobi last evening.
The ESA network which represents over 4000 civil society organisations in the region was formed in 2017 to strengthen coordination for joint advocacy by national Civil Society Alliances (CSAs) and meet the critical need for policy engagement and communication support to position nutrition as a key development issue.
Currently Onyango works as the National Coordinator for Kenya’s Scaling-UP Nutrition Civil Society Alliance (SUN CSA) where he has been instrumental in mobilising political and financial commitments to nutrition in the country.
The AGM was part of the regional network’s meeting that started on Monday in Nairobi where country CSAs and individual members and stakeholders who included private sector, government representatives and UN agencies showcased milestones from their advocacy efforts.
Kenya’s SUN CSA highlighted the political commitments that it has mobilised leading to 11 county governors signing political and financial commitments to improve nutrition in their counties. The alliance also showcased the impacts of the commitments on the fight against malnutrition such as a general drop in stunted growth among children by 8.4 percent over a five year period.
The meeting aimed to ensure that the East and Southern African Scaling-Up Nutrition Civil Societies Network will be coordinated effectively and the governance structures established and a joint regional strategy for 2024 will be reviewed and updated.
The organisers of the regional meeting expected that engagement and collaboration with the Scaling-Up Nutrition Movements (SMS) regional hub and other regional technical and financial partners will be enhanced through regular communication, joint activities, and mutual support by the end of the meeting
It was also expected that a platform for peer-to-peer learning, knowledge exchange, information sharing and identification of joint advocacy opportunities among Civil Societies Alliance (CSAs) in the region will be provided and used effectively and that the the capacity for CSAs in good governance and documentation of good practices will be strengthened through training, mentoring, and peer support.
