The BMZ-financed project Food and Nutrition Security, Enhanced Resilience Plus (FANSER+) builds on the experiences and impacts of the global project FANSER in Zambia, which was implemented from 2015 to 2025 in six districts of Eastern and Luapula Provinces. While the predecessor project focused primarily on direct service delivery, FANSER+ places strong emphasis on sustainability through active involvement and capacity development of government structures at all levels.
The module objective of the FANSER+ project is to improve the nutritional situation and resilience of poor rural households, especially women and small children under the age of two years, in selected districts of Eastern Province and Luapula Province. At outcome level, it aims at improving the dietary diversity of women, increasing the share of children receiving an adequate diet, increasing the household production of nutritious and climate resilient crops, improving nutrition related gender aspects and capacitating government staff for better nutrition-related service delivery.
Target groups: The target group to be directly reached comprises 60,000 poor rural households, especially those in which women of reproductive age (15 to 49 years) and children under two years of age live. The care group model, a cascade approach for knowledge transfer, is to reach 75,000 women of reproductive age from those households with 20,000 infants and small children under the age of 2 in six districts of Eastern Province and Luapula Province. A further 37,500 men are to be engaged through targeted gender-transformative approaches.
The official government partner of the programme is the National Food and Nutrition Commission (NFNC). The NFNC is coordinated by the Office of the Vice President and is subject to administrative supervision by the Ministry of Health.
The project is to address particularly government staff at meso-level with a focus on governmental stakeholders in the nutrition sector who are responsible for budgeting, coordinating and providing nutrition-related services. Increasing gender equality is a key objective of the project and is strategically addressed at outcome and output levels (the project has a GG2 marker).
The overarching impact hypothesis of the project is that a multi-level approach with the target group-oriented implementation of multi-sectoral food and nutrition security measures at the micro-level, the qualification of stakeholders at the meso-level and policy advice to the relevant government stakeholders at the national level will contribute to sustainably improving the nutritional situation and resilience of poor households and especially of women and young children.
The project builds on the approaches and evidence of the predecessor FANSER project, which has developed effective approaches, especially for working with the direct target groups at household and community level. The tried and tested approaches focusing on healthy nutrition and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) through the Care Group Model, the cultivation and processing of nutritious food and the establishment of savings and loan groups (SILC - Internal Saving and Lending Communities) as well as the Farmer Business School approach are being scaled up and expanded by extending and supplementing measures to strengthen resilience. The gender-transformative approaches, initiated under FANSER to promote gender equality in households and communities, are being strategically developed and expanded.
The capacity development strategy which needs to be developed as part of the project addresses the increase in knowledge and skills development of women and men at household and community level. CD is of particular importance at the level of government staff, whose individual professional competences are strengthened at both the technical and the management, leadership and soft skills level.
In addition, the contractor largely contributes to facilitating behaviour change with regard to food and nutrition security, WASH as well as gender equality in the rural communities of the FANSER+ project areas. As part of this, the contractor is responsible to collaborate with and build capacities among relevant government staff to enable them to provide relevant services and supervision independently (this refers to technical but also leadership and organisational skills). In detail, the contractor is responsible for providing four work packages:
(1) Establishing and facilitating the community-based care group model together with the decentralised structures of the Ministry of Health; (2) Establishing and facilitating the Saving and Internal Lending Communities (SILC, a village-based saving and lending approach) together with the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services; (3) Developing and implementing concepts to enable gender equality with a focus on joint decision making in the rural households related nutrition, agriculture and WASH aspects. For this, the contractor shall work with and through traditional and church leadership structures. In addition, the contractor shall contribute to improving services related to family planning for youth through so-called "youth-friendly corners" which are part of rural health facilities; (4) Developing and implementing capacity development approaches for relevant government staff (mostly at district level) to increase their technical, organisational and leadership skills with the aim of increasing their ability to provide nutrition related services independently.