On 1st April 2015, the GSMA in partnership with CABI (www.cabi.org) and the National Food and Nutrition Commission (NFNC) held a productive workshop in Lusaka, Zambia. The event served to introduce a project to create nutrition-specific content and the key partners involved. In-country stakeholders provided valuable insights and opinions around the best focus for this nutrition-specific content. The outputs from the workshop will be helpful to inform further development of the content framework and ensure that content is fully aligned with national priorities and programs.

The first part of the workshop was nutrition related, and the second part was focused on mobile. The workshop provided a forum for stakeholders and project partners to discuss opportunities for the development of specific services, in accordance with their current interests and needs along with the opportunities for long term project sustainability. Please have a look at the Zambia mHealth Country Feasibility Report for more information.

The following is a guest blog written by William Chilufya, Director of CSO Sun, Zambia.

In line with the growth and transformation of communication in peoples’ day-to-day lives, mobile phones have made their presence felt in Zambia’s healthcare system.

Against this background, the GSMA mHealth programme’s mNutrition Initiative has two major outcomes:

• Cost-effective, sustainable business models for mobile phone enabled nutrition and agriculture services to households
• The expectation that these services will result in new knowledge, behaviour change and adoption of new practices in the area of health and nutrition among the users of these mobile phone based services

Within the CSO Sun Network, initial feedback indicates that the public at large is receptive to the use of mobile phones for nutrition messaging and consultation. In reality, the concept of enhancing the outreach of nutrition messages through the use of the mobile phone in rural areas is new and has a wide scope for future development. The immediate requirements will be to build a strong alliance of partners to ensure penetration of each idea, availing of the correct medium, appropriate to users, for the delivery of information and looking into how to ensure sustainability through, among other strategies, commercialisation.

At CSO SUN, we see the use of mobile phones as having the potential to overcome the often-quoted barriers to treatment seeking i.e. lack of time, money, shyness, privacy, etc. in remote areas and particularly for females. Sometimes, shyness or privacy concerns are reasons for not coming to a health facility.

The workshop was attended by 40 representatives from 19 organisations. Following pre-validation with a number of these stakeholders, the workshop highlighted the key nutrition priorities, using data compiled from a range of sources, including the newly published Zambia Demographic and Health Survey 2013-14. The final output of the workshop was a fully validated Nutrition Landscape Analysis, covering a wide range of subject areas that influence or are influenced by nutrition.

The information presented here, along with further in-country stakeholder engagement and validation, will be used by CABI to develop a targeted Country Content Framework that will highlight the most important nutrition priorities and interventions that can be supported by the mNutrition Initiative in Zambia. Validation for this will take place with some of the key nutrition stakeholders already engaged in the project over the coming weeks. CABI’s next tasks also include the recruitment and training of a local content partner to support the creation of targeted, applicable, accessible and actionable mobile-ready nutrition messages.

If you are interested in playing a part in this innovative and exciting project, and are an active player in the nutrition sector in Zambia with mobile content development experience, please get in touch with Charlotte Jordan.

For more information on GSMA Mobile for Development mHealth, please see here or contact us on [email protected].