Persistence leads to groundbreaking nutrition standards in Nigeria

Governments are responsible for feeding millions of people every day—in schools, hospitals, correctional facilities, and other public institutions, giving them a unique power to positively influence food choices and impact health at scale. Despite this, most countries have no national policy in place to set guidelines and outline best practices on public food procurement—the process of buying, serving, and selling food in government-owned institutions.

This was true in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with more than 240 million people, where a lack of a national policy was a missed opportunity to increase access to healthy food to improve overall health and reduce the burden of diet-related noncommunicable diseases for the country.

In 2023, Resolve to Save Lives (RTSL) partnered with the Nigerian Heart Foundation to conduct an analysis of public food procurement practices across publicly funded institutions in Nigeria. The goal was to understand the realities of food procurement practices within the diverse settings supported through government funds, many of which serve the country’s most vulnerable.

What they found was a complex system that included many distinctive sectors and settings, each with their own unique processes, priorities, and decisionmakers—and an opportunity to bring them all together under one national policy.

Using the World Health Organization (WHO)’s “Action Framework for Developing and Implementing Public Food Procurement and Service Policies for Healthy Diet” and building off RTSL’s previously developed Guide to Developing Nutrition Standards, RTSL and its partners in the Government of Nigeria drafted a National Guideline on Public Procurement of Food and Related Services to set nutrition standards for public institutions across the country. The policy set out specific guidelines and best practices for how food should be selected, prepared, and served to improve nutritional quality and promote a healthy diet.

This policy was ambitious, with its success dependent on consensus building among stakeholders in health, procurement, regulatory agencies, and other sectors that normally had limited interaction with each other. The 2023 analysis had set the stage for this collaboration; RTSL and the Nigerian Heart Foundation had begun engaging with the groups whose buy-in would be needed going forward.

So, when, in late 2025, RTSL collaborated with partners to hold a technical workshop to review the draft guidelines, this early work paid off: they knew who to invite to the table. These stakeholders were already familiar with the project and ready to share their thoughts and insights. Bringing together government agencies, including the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Federal Ministry of Agriculture, and Federal Ministry of Justice, also created a sense of collective ownership of the guidelines.

Rather than a top-down directive focused on compliance, this collaboration strengthened the group’s understanding of and commitment to a shared goal: improving the country’s health. The results of this workshop helped to finalize the groundbreaking policy and move it forward for passage and implementation.

As a result of this collaborative work, in July of 2026, the Ministry of Health in Nigeria officially launched the National Guideline on Public Procurement of Food and Related Services.

Not only is this Nigeria’s first policy addressing nutrition standards for public food procurement; it has set a new bar for how to create innovative policies by building partnership across diverse government agencies. It also serves as an example for how WHO’s Action Framework and international nutrition standards can be tailored to local context and resources.

The policy will now move to implementation, with BPP as the lead agency tasked with monitoring and enforcement at a national level. Next steps will include the development of new tools and trainings to support public institutions as they adjust to the new policy and its requirements. Along the way, continued support from and engagement with stakeholders and partners will remain crucial to success.

The passage of this policy marks a nationwide commitment to providing all in Nigeria with access to healthy foods that meet nutrition standards and prevent, rather than exacerbate, heart disease and other diet-related noncommunicable diseases. It also holds the potential to reshape the overall food environment in Nigeria by impacting the wider market and triggering private sector suppliers and vendors to shift towards providing healthier food options.

Nigeria will also serve as a model for other countries looking to implement similar policies at a national level, including the importance of early engagement with stakeholders and partners, and creating opportunities for sustained engagement every step of the way. By doing this, Nigeria continues to set an example for how to build a healthier future for all.