Opening Remarks by the Isiolo County -Director Monitoring and Evaluation
Mr. Guyo Abdi, the County Director of Monitoring and Evaluation, extended a warm welcome to all attendees as the meeting commenced. He expressed gratitude towards the members and acknowledged the KNBS team’s participation in facilitating the meeting. Additionally, the Director thanked We World for their support in implementing the Isiolo County Platform and recognized their contribution towards the project’s success.
The Director also aacknowledged the county departments’ presence and representation at the meeting, setting a positive tone and fostering a conducive environment for productive discussions.
He emphasized on the importance of data in planning, particularly in light of the worst drought experienced in the county for the last six years. We World was thanked for supporting high-impact assessments and providing cash to improve livelihoods. The NIPFN Platform was highlighted as a crucial tool for harnessing nutrition information and was deemed helpful for proper planning and decision-making to improve nutrition status.
Opening Remarks by the Director Production Statistics
The KNBS Director of Production Statistics (DPS) Directorate – Mr. Robert Nderitu who was the head of the delegation expressed gratitude to the County of Isiolo for the excellent turnout at the meeting and affirmed KNBS’s commitment to provide technical assistance in setting up the National Information Platform for Nutrition (NIPFN) in the Isiolo County. He appreciated We World for supporting the county in developing the NIPFN platform.
The DPS also highlighted KNBS’s mandate of generating and handling statistics using various methods, including data systems. He congratulated the Isiolo county team for their dedication to developing a Nutrition and Food Security platform. He highlighted that the KNBS team will present an example of the platform developed at KNBS NIPFN and support the county government in creating a similar platform. They also expressed interest in collaborating with the county government in other areas including the development of county statistical abstracts.
He noted that the meeting should seek to answers on issues of establishing the NIPFN platform, such as identifying the county office responsible for leading the platform, mapping data sources related to food security and nutrition, identifying data storage locations, and managing discrepancies in data sources.
The DPS noted that various surveys have been conducted in Isiolo county, including SMART surveys and the Demographic Health Survey (DHS) 2022. The DHS 2022 showed a stunting rate of 14.1%, wasting of 7.2%, and underweight of 11.5% for children under the age of five.