Background
To feed its growing population amid climate change and other challenges, the developing world needs a flourishing food system that is nutrition-sensitive, efficient, safe, healthy, and environmentally sustainable. This requires bringing modern technologies to local communities, helping stakeholders to acquire the relevant technical know-how, and building strong partnerships and institutions. Developed countries around the world can play important roles in these efforts and Japan is one of them. We explore how Japan can lend its expertise to address food and nutrition challenges in the developing world by examining the transferability of Japan’s advanced technologies, know-how and institutional innovations to the developing world.
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), under the financial support through the Japanese Government’s FY2024 Supplementary Budget, implements the project “Protecting vulnerable children from food insecurity crisis through Japan’s expertise on school lunch: Shoku-iku nutrition education intervention in Cote d’Ivoire”.
School meals intervention is a multi-sectoral approach that plays an important role in long-term human capital formation by improving young children’s nutrition conditions and learning performance. In many developing countries, however, sustainable school meal systems have not been introduced due to a lack of suitable food, appropriate school facilities, certified dieticians, and so on, which is a serious problem when people live under the current threat of food insecurity and food price spike. In collaboration with Japanese experts working on school lunch, we plan to introduce systematic school-based nutrition education – Shoku-iku in Cote d’Ivoire by creating nutrition education specialists through training activities in Niigata. The intervention aims to create behavioral change among children and families and thus improve child nutritional status, health and learning performance, that together increase resilience of the school system, children, and local livelihoods to food insecurity crisis.
Japan’s nutrition education system
In Japan, a nationwide school lunch system was established after World War II, and today, children receiving school lunch with guaranteed nutritional balance have a high coverage rate of 99% in elementary schools and 79% in junior high schools. The system has played an important role in improving children's nutrition amid postwar food shortages. The physique of Japanese children has improved. Furthermore, school lunches with good nutritional balance contribute to increased nutritional knowledge among children and their parents, leading to the prevention of lifestyle-related diseases such as obesity reduction.
The conditions for providing sustainable and nutritionally balanced school meals include the enactment of the School Meals Law, the creation of national nutrition and hygiene standards and a monitoring system, the installation of facilities by school owners (municipalities, etc.), cost-sharing of food ingredients by parents, the use of locally produced food ingredients for food procurement, the establishment of a school lunch program, and the use of local food ingredients. This also includes the assignment of a nutritionist to supervise school meal management, the preparation of nutritionally balanced menus, and the implementation of nutrition education.
Institutional arrangements
The intervention will focus on (i) human resource development for school-based Shoku-iku nutrition education and (ii) creation of educational materials for nutrition education linked to school lunch. These interventions are expected to improve the effectiveness of currently implemented school lunch in the country. Evidence shows that behavioral change through Shoku-iku can create a sizable impact on nutrition outcomes, even though a significant change in nutrition contents. Moreover, Shoku-iku also covers basic understandings of key structural components, usually displayed in a three color framework, to be in school lunch. Therefore, it is expected to induce changes in actual school lunch contents, though indirectly. And, nutrition education can diffuse much more easily than creating a change in nutrition contents.
The intervention directly draws upon Japan’s experience on school lunch in collaboration with academic researchers and practitioners in this field in Japan (City of Niigata, University of Niigata Prefecture and Japanese Society of Nutrition and Dietetics). Specifically, a group of specialists who work for the nutrition education intervention will be invited to Niigata, where they will receive intensive training/education on Japanese Shoku-iku. They are the core human capital that will implement the intervention at the school and community level.
More specifically, the intervention takes place in two forms. First, selected candidate specialists from Cote d’Ivoire will be invited to Niigata, where they will be training on school-based nutrition education. They participate in actual classroom teaching at an elementary school in the City of Niigata and take training sessions at the University of Niigata Prefecture. In both activities, interpreters who can use Japanese and French will be attached.
Secondly, the trained specialists will be assigned to the intervention schools to practice Japanese style Shuku-iku nutrition education. Necessary teaching materials and classroom settings will be also prepared to promote the Japanese nutrition education in the context of Cote d’Ivoire. A regular reporting system and monthly monitoring will be institutionalized.
They will also improve the management of school lunch practices on the ground drawing upon Japan’s experience, which they learn through the training in Niigata.
Specific structure
The intervention aims to create human resources that promote nutrition education at primary schools. For this purpose, 20 teachers are invited to Japan to learn about Shoku-iku nutrition education directly from school lunch experts in the University of Niigata Prefecture and at a primary school in the City of Niigata. The half of the trainees will organize training to 30 teachers in Cote d’Ivoire after they are back from the training missing in Japan. In total, 50 teachers receive training directly in Japan and indirectly in Cote d’Ivoire. They are assumed to teach at 50 primary schools and these are intervention schools.
IFPRI is seeking three qualified consultants who can contribute to designing the Shoku-iku nutrition education intervention in Cote d’Ivoire drawing upon Japan’s experience in school lunch and can design and implement nutrition education training for school teachers from Cote d’Ivoire, scheduled in Niigata, Japan.
Scope of work
Contribute to designing the Shoku-iku nutrition education intervention
Design the training program in Niigata
Teach the trainees from Cote d’Ivoire background, theory and practices on school lunch and nutrition education in Japan
Introduce to the trainees actual practices at an elementary school in Niigata
Support impact assessments by contributing to designing survey and monitoring instruments
Indicative Timeline
June 2025 to March 2026. We anticipate signing a contract as soon as possible.
Required qualifications of the consultant / survey team leader
Demonstrated outstanding experience in conducting school lunch research in Japan
Demonstrated experience in conducting school lunch research in some developing countries other than Japan
Currently teaching nutrition education to elementary school students in Japan
Currently engaged in university-level training and education on school lunch related subjects such as nutrition, education and health sciences
Able to visit Cote d’Ivoire to understand local needs and challenges in school lunch and nutrition education
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
Preferred qualifications
Demonstrated experience in coordinating activities in the field
Demonstrated experience in effective interaction and coordination with collaborators and project partners
Proficiency in English
Requirements in the application
CV
Application deadline: April 19, 2025