Context

As part of broader efforts to combat malnutrition in Nigeria, USAID and TechnoServe sought to strengthen the country’s capacity for large-scale food fortification. This required a clearer understanding of the fortification landscape, industry readiness and the most viable opportunities for scaling impact.

Challenge

The challenge was to identify suitable food vehicles for large-scale fortification, assess the readiness and constraints of key industry actors, and determine where investment and intervention could generate the greatest impact within Nigeria’s food systems.

Approach

Gawani conducted a comprehensive assessment of Nigeria’s large-scale food fortification landscape, including detailed profiles of seven candidate food vehicles with a particular focus on rice. Our work included evaluating the capacity and constraints of large-scale food processors, assessing value chains and market readiness, ranking programmatic opportunities for USAID consideration, and recommending improvements to the rapid landscape assessment toolkit for future USAID missions.

The assessment was aligned with the large-scale food fortification results framework to ensure strategic relevance and implementation value.

Outcome

The project gave USAID and TechnoServe actionable insight to guide investment and decision-making within Nigeria’s food fortification ecosystem. It identified high-potential food vehicles, clarified industry bottlenecks and supported more targeted engagement across the sector.

Sustainability

The work strengthened the applicability of the assessment framework for future country-level interventions and created a stronger foundation for scaling sustainable, nutrition-sensitive fortification initiatives across Nigeria.