The IGNITE Grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Will Shape Future Ways of Doing Business
Tanager announces the launch of the five-year, $14.3 million Integrating Gender and Nutrition through Innovative Technical Exchange in Agriculture (IGNITE) grant to provide technical assistance to African organizations to implement quality nutrition-sensitive and gender-integrated agricultural interventions.
The IGNITE project will partner with organizations at two levels. First, Tanager will support designing, implementing, and evaluating agriculture interventions that increase nutrition outcomes and women’s empowerment. Secondly, we will accompany African institutions in incorporating nutrition and gender equality into their policy priorities and business practices—their way of doing business—going forward. IGNITE’s target countries include Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Tanzania, with a regional office based out of Nairobi, Kenya.
Tanager will identify appropriate partners and develop tailored intervention support and systems-strengthening plans, and will provide implementation and follow-up assistance as needed. Tanager will also use the results from the work with IGNITE partners to identify effective and efficient agriculture models that increase both equitable consumption of safe, affordable, nutritious diets year-round and women’s empowerment in agriculture. Tanager will collaborate with a network of Africa-based local service providers to support nutrition and gender integration for agriculture interventions and institutions using the learnings, models, and tools developed under IGNITE.
“We are looking forward to providing strategic and comprehensive support to African institutions through the IGNITE grant,” said Tanager president, Ana Bilik. “With the support of the foundation, we are committed to ensuring that investments in agriculture achieve the greatest economic and social impact. Tanager will support partners to integrate gender and nutrition into their programs, organization, and policies to achieve a sustained impact.”
Partners’ action plans will be developed in close consultation with them, tailored to meet their specific needs. “Tanager will build off of the strength of institutions’ existing agriculture expertise,” said Hannah Guedenet, Tanager nutrition advisor and IGNITE technical director. “We see this as a close partnership with the partners—working alongside them to achieve goals and plan for the future. We want them to continue moving forward after the project ends with a vision for and the tools to ensure gender equality and nutritious diets.”
Tanager works to ensure that producers reach agriculture goals of higher yields and better incomes, and that women are engaged as key drivers of economic growth. In addition, women’s empowerment is central to moving households along the agriculture-to-nutrition pathway. The IGNITE investment seeks to develop tools and approaches that leverage the synergies between agriculture, gender, and nutrition.