Introducing Nutrition Futures Initiative, a co-innovation platform to discover effective, sustainable nutrition solutions for social protection.
By Anthony Wenndt
We’re living through a moment in history marked by dramatic shifts in poverty and vulnerability. In some countries, particularly in the Global South, rates of extreme poverty are still above pre-pandemic levels, and the most vulnerable people are falling further behind (World Bank, 2024). The alarming trends we’re witnessing are the result of multiple intersecting factors, such as conflict, climate change, geopolitics, and political will; these factors work in complex combinations, leaving the nutrition status of millions hanging in the balance.
With this backdrop of polycrisis, social protection systems have never been more important, and social protection coverage has also never been so vast. For the first time, more than half of the world’s population is covered by at least one social protection benefit (ILO, 2024). This upward trend in coverage has sweeping positive implications for nutrition and food security that will be felt well into the future. Despite this progress globally, the benefits of social protection are not felt equally by all people: the ILO has found that the lowest-income countries still have a dismal coverage (around 10% of the population).
Crucially, not all social protections are equally effective in promoting nutrition outcomes. Unlocking the potential of social protection systems to shape nutrition requires concerted effort to improve nutrition-sensitivity. The importance of nutrition-sensitive social protection was recently highlighted in the SOFI Report 2025, which illustrates how social protection can lead to improved nutrition outcomes, particularly through addressing gaps in the affordability of adequately nutritious foods (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, & WHO, 2025).
Expanding, enhancing, and reinforcing the coverage and quality of nutrition-sensitive social protection can help transform access to healthy diets and is critical for safeguarding nutrition-secure futures for all.
Innovation as a driver of nutrition-secure futures
Why is it that social protection systems haven’t been able to deliver consistently for nutrition? There isn’t one clear answer, but what is clear is that systems are invariably resistant to change. Social protection is often sensitive and political, and this is for good reason: for millions of people, social protection benefits and services critically support livelihoods, stability, resilience, well-being, and food security. Any change to service provision involves a delicate calculation of potential risks to people, institutions, and, indeed, entire systems.
This sensitivity inherently disincentivises any deviation from the status quo and, thus, limits the appetite for innovation. There are woefully few spaces dedicated to testing new ideas in ways that are visible, transparent, and connected to people’s lived realities. The practical consequence of this is that innovations are often slow to take hold and be scaled.
While systems are slow to change, we are fortunate that many of the drivers of change are poised to make substantive progress in the very near future, if provided an enabling environment to do so. Diverse stakeholders from the grassroots to the highest levels of government have articulated many brilliant ideas that have the potential to transform the nutrition impacts of social protection programs. For example, recent innovation challenges from across the sector have led to the development of solutions that can streamline the delivery of cash assistance, strengthen the traceability of biofortified foods from farm to fork, and harness the power of generative AI to localize agricultural support to farmers, just to name a few.
So how can we create opportunities to integrate this growing wave of insight into social protection systems, in ways that manage inevitable risks and align with the myriad needs and constraints of social protection administrators? This is a challenge that GAIN has set out to address through the Nutrition Futures Initiative.
An initiative to power the next generation of nutrition innovations in social protection systems
The Nutrition Futures Initiative (NFI), a co-innovation platform established under GAIN’s social protection programme, is building a community of policymakers, social innovators, community leaders, and development sector experts who are driven by the singular mission of strengthening the nutrition impacts of social protection systems. In partnership with Proportion Global, GAIN has spearheaded the development of a cutting-edge digital co-innovation ecosystem for NFI. This creates space for dialogue, collaboration, and knowledge sharing within and across country contexts in the Global South. At the core of NFI is a commitment to bringing diverse actors together in the quest to discover effective, sustainable nutrition solutions for social protection.
Through co-innovation processes facilitated from start to finish on the NFI platform, programme administrators and development partners are allowed to deeply and constructively engage with the perspectives of those closest to the problem: community members, programme beneficiaries, value chain actors, and frontline programme delivery personnel. The platform hosts open public dialogues on critical topics at the nexus of social protection and nutrition, enabling diverse actors to co-create solutions and share critical insights in real-time, ultimately leading to the production of global public goods that can propel implementation and adaptation across contexts. NFI also nurtures permanent multi-stakeholder innovation communities, each rooted in a specific thematic area, which serve as the foundation for every co-innovation process, dialogue, and event on the platform.
We feel strongly that inclusion is a game-changer for innovation in social protection systems: having the ability to triangulate conventional evidence with local and indigenous knowledge from stakeholders on the ground, in a way that is constructive and meaningful for key decision-makers, has the potential to drive solutions that are more effective, sustainable, and context-sensitive Join GAIN and our partners on this platform, and in our quest to ensure that social protection systems drive lasting nutrition impacts, for all. For more information about how you can join and participate in the Nutrition Futures Initiative, visit us online at nutritionfutures.org. Let’s shape nutrition-secure futures by innovating, together.
