Between January and September 2025, cross-sectoral teams from Ghana, the Gambia and Liberia went through CABRI’s Building Public Finance Capabilities for Nutrition programme, applying the problem-driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) approach to problems related to inadequate domestic financing for nutrition interventions.

The programme concluded on 25 September where country-teams shared their PDIA journey and how they have attempted to address coordination issues, financing gaps and weak oversight to improve nutrition outcomes in their countries.

Prior to the webinar, the country-teams met in Ghana for the progress review workshop. Country-teams had the opportunity to learn more about a study carried out by the Center for Global Development (CGD) on "School feeding programmes: costing and evidence of effectiveness". The study co-authored by Dr Biniam Bedasso, also coach of team Ghana, draws on data from 2016 school feeding programmes worldwide, and explores the cost, quality and scalability of these programmes in a wide variety of settings.

We were then joined by Sustainable Financing Initiative (SFI) and ODI Global for a presentation on, "Innovative Financing of School Feeding Programs through a focus on Sin Taxes" - a draft toolkit that provides a practical roadmap for governments looking to introduce or reform a health tax and earmark its revenue for school meal programmes. Its objective is to guide policymakers based on their context rather than prescribe one solution.

The BPFCN programme is funded by the EU/BMZ and implemented by GIZ.