Adaora has led and contributed to high-impact initiatives that strengthen health systems, accelerate digital innovation and expand access to quality health care across Africa. In her most recent leadership role, she designed and implemented digital health and AI-enabled programs that improved patient-centered care for people living with chronic and routine health conditions while leading multicountry capacity-building initiatives that have reached more than 16,000 health care workers, managers and policymakers. She has also spearheaded innovative models that combine digital technologies, human-centered support and sustainable financing to improve continuity of care, health literacy and equitable access to health care.

Previously, Adaora led the Nigeria Health Innovation Marketplace, bringing together government, development partners, investors and health innovators to accelerate scalable health solutions. She designed innovation acceleration and investment readiness programs that helped health ventures secure more than US$1 million in funding and expand services to more than 280,000 beneficiaries. She also curated innovations that formed part of Nigeria’s investment case for the Global Financing Facility. A Commonwealth Professional Fellow, she continues to advance the responsible adoption of AI and digital transformation in health systems through user-centered design, policy engagement and implementation support.

Adaora serves as a board adviser to Hillbridge Consulting. She holds a Master of Science in public health from the University of Bedfordshire in the United Kingdom and a Bachelor of Science in applied microbiology from Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Nigeria. She also holds PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner certifications, a Project Management in Global Health certification from the University of Washington, and was awarded a Commonwealth Professional Fellowship.

Publications

• Baldridge et al. Formative Evaluation and Adaptation of a Hypertension Extension for Community Health Outcomes Program for Healthcare Workers within the Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria. Global Heart Journal of the World Heart Federation (2023).
• Baldridge et al. Enhancing Hypertension Education of Community Health Extension Workers in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory: the impact of the extension for community healthcare outcomes model on primary care, a quasi-experimental study. BMC Primary Care (2024).
• Baldridge et al. Implementation of the Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes Model for Hypertension Education of Frontline Health Care Workers in the Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria: Explanatory Sequential Mixed Methods Evaluation. JMIR Publications (2025).

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Established in 2023 with seed investment from the Gates Foundation, FCDP is a SUN Movement resource available to all 66 SUN countries. The platform aims to reshape the nutrition financing landscape by inspiring and igniting government leaders to elevate nutrition financing as a priority and accelerate impact across sectors.

In the first phase of the platform, FCDP established itself as a key resource for SUN countries working closely with the SUN Movement Secretariat. FCDP supported several countries with technical assistance and capacity strengthening (including Nigeria, Ethiopia, Senegal, Somalia, Pakistan), worked with partners to host regional convenings in Africa and Asia, and generated key learnings including new lessons on nutrition budget tagging and tracking in the Asia region with Capacity for Nutrition (C4N).

This new phase of the platform is managed by R4D UK and guided by FCDP’s Roadmap and Results Framework 2026–2028.

“FCDP has proven to be an invaluable resource to SUN countries and R4D UK is pleased to host the platform in its new phase and moving forward. Our expertise in innovations and systems learning together with nutrition financing means that the support we provide countries is always fit for purposes and of the highest quality” said R4D UK Director, Tom Feeny.

FCDP’s vision of success to support SUN countries includes the following long-term goals:

1. Greater sustainability of funding to ensure programs that offer important nutrition actions are uninterrupted and government owned.
2. Increased funding for nutrition-aligned country priorities across sectors and all sources — public and external.
3. More strategic use of funding that ensures government-owned policies and programs enhance the achievement of food and nutrition targets.

Working closely with the SUN Movement Secretariat (SMS) and our collaborators including the World Bank, UNICEF, C4N and others, FCDP is helping to shape a new agenda for sustainable nutrition financing with country governments leading the way.

Learn more about the Finance Capacity Development Platform for Scaling Up Nutrition countries here.

For inquiries please contact the FCDP Project Manager, Abbe McCarter.

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The workshop was an opportunity for capacity strengthening and peer learning across countries on nutrition-responsive PFM actions for the region. Across the 4-day workshop, three important themes on what drives country progress emerged:

1. Making the case for investing in nutrition remains the foundation of sustainable nutrition financing. Communicating a clear rationale for why investing in nutrition is important to a country’s broader socioeconomic goals is essential for decision makers to unlock funding.
2. Having the right policy levers that enable sustainable nutrition financing is important as they incentivize budget and planning officers to embed nutrition actions into annual plans and be held accountable.
3. All of this must be executed with government financing mechanisms and tools within PFM systems that enable effective and efficient usage of funds that encourage multi-year investment in activities that work best to achieve country goals.

Each of these thematic areas are explored in depth in the workshop summary report, along with the major challenges and bottlenecks countries reported encountering under each theme, as well as lessons learned and best practices countries shared during the workshop.

In addition to the key themes on driving country progress, clear set of priority activities were identified by workshop participants for the region to take forward:

1. Review and align on a new narrative for sustainable nutrition financing in the context of public financial management to support making the case for nutrition and ensure alignment of all relevant stakeholders in this collaborative effort. This includes a review of existing guidance on:
   • Nutrition budget tracking based on country experience.
   • Prioritization of underfunded nutrition actions across sectors [e.g. nutrition investment taxonomy across sectors based on latest evidence.]
   • Costing of multisectoral nutrition plans with a financing strategy, ensuring they are aligned to and inform sector strategies
2. Establish a regional community of practice on sustainable nutrition financing including routine virtual calls for country guidance and update sharing, and a regular annual convening of the regional capacity strengthening workshop.

Each country developed their own first draft country action plan which they are taking forward to action. This regional guidance will help accelerate and enhance what countries are able to achieve.

FCDP is a SUN Movement resource available to all 66 SUN Countries. The platform aims to transform the nutrition financing landscape by inspiring and igniting government leaders to elevate nutrition financing as a priority and accelerate impact across sectors.

The post Nutrition Responsive Public Financial Management in Asia: Capacity Strengthening Workshop Summary Report appeared first on Results for Development.

The learnings and experience sharing provided through this study presents countries with a practical frame of reference and a set of diagnostic elements that they can take forward to consider their own nutrition budget tracking approaches. The challenges and considerations highlighted by this study indicate that work must continue to update guidance to countries on nutrition budget tracking with ample dialogue across countries and technical partners to build consensus. This was validated by SUN countries at the recent SUN Asia Hub workshop where country delegations put forth a strong request to partners to come together to update the SUN guidance on budget analysis for nutrition. This updated guidance should assist countries to articulate their use case, provide a common definition of nutrition and taxonomy of investments and review and update guidelines on weighting of nutrition expenditure.

FCDP is a SUN Movement resource available to all 66 SUN Countries. The platform aims to transform the nutrition financing landscape by inspiring and igniting government leaders to elevate nutrition financing as a priority and accelerate impact across sectors.

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Achieving the nutrition goals set forth in these guiding strategic documents will require sustainable financing for nutrition and coordinated efforts across national and international stakeholders. The Government of the Federal Republic of Somalia, with the support of the SUN Movement’s Finance Capacity Development Platform (FCDP), therefore undertook a nutrition financing landscape assessment in order to identify priority areas for support in order to achieve the country’s national nutrition goals. The assessment reviewed current sources of nutrition funding, trends in government budget allocations and expenditures, and identified several of the challenges faced by sectoral ministries in financing nutrition interventions. The report sets out clear policy actions recommended to achieve sustainable financing for food and nutrition in Somalia.

FCDP is a SUN Movement resource available to all 66 SUN Countries. The platform aims to transform the nutrition financing landscape by inspiring and igniting government leaders to elevate nutrition financing as a priority and accelerate impact across sectors.

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Quatre messages clés ont émergé de l’analyse régionale du financement de la nutrition, ainsi que trois appels à l’action pour les points focaux nationaux SUN afin de financer durablement la nutrition dans la région Afrique :

Message Clés

1. Pour chaque dollar investi par un pays dans la nutrition, il en retira un retour sur investissement de 23 dollars dans la prospérité du pays, avec un impact de grande portée dans divers secteurs.
2. Atteindre tous les ménages africains qui ont besoin d’interventions nutritionnelles nécessite un investissement à faible coût et à haut rendement de la part du gouvernement, qui bénéficie directement aux services de base dans les secteurs de l’agriculture, de la santé, de la protection sociale, de l’éducation, de l’eau, de l’assainissement et de l’hygiène.
3. Il est nécessaire d’augmenter le financement public de la nutrition pour éviter une aggravation de la crise nutritionnelle et pour impacter durablement sur la prospérité.
4. Les pays doivent trouver de nouvelles opportunités de financement extérieur pour améliorer la nutrition et exploiter des options de financement innovantes pour la nutrition tant le financement traditionnel des donateurs diminue drastiquement.

Appel à l’Action

Les gouvernements africains doivent agir rapidement pour améliorer la situation du financement de la nutrition en prenant les mesures nécessaires pour:

• Examiner les tendances du financement de la nutrition dans tous les secteurs et vérifier si chaque secteur a respecté ses engagements en matière de nutrition.
• Examiner les déficits de financement et les besoins immédiats et fixer des objectifs de financement pour les priorités sous-financées qui ont besoin d’aide.
• Maximiser les programmes gouvernementaux en intégrant les actions nutritionnelles et identifier des sources innovantes de financement.

Cette ressource a été co-développée par le FCDP et les pôles régionaux SUN pour l’Afrique francophone, l’Afrique anglophone et le pôle de convergence, avec les contributions de Tendai Gunda, Tetteh Ogum, Eve Gossiaux, Andoniaina Brice et Zahra Inayat.

Pour une traduction anglaise de cette page, cliquez ici.

Le FCDP est une ressource du Mouvement SUN accessible aux 66 pays SUN. La plateforme vise à transformer le paysage du financement de la nutrition en inspirant et en incitant les dirigeants gouvernementaux à faire du financement de la nutrition une priorité et à accélérer l’impact dans tous les secteurs.

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Four key messages have emerged from the regional nutrition financing review, as well as three calls to action for SUN country focal points in order to sustainably finance nutrition in the Africa region:

Key Messages:

1. For every $1 a country invests in nutrition they will gain a $23 return on investment into the prosperity of the country with wide-reaching impact across sectors
2. Reaching all African households that need nutrition interventions requires a low-cost/high-reward investment by government going directly into government platforms across Agriculture, Health, Social Protection, Education & WASH sectors
3. More government funding for nutrition is needed to avert a worsening nutrition crisis and for countries to make a lasting impact on the prosperity of their country
4. Countries must find new external funding opportunities to improve nutrition and harness innovative financing options for nutrition, as traditional donor funding will soon come to an end

Call to Action:

African governments must move quickly to improve their nutrition funding situation by taking the first steps to:

• Review nutrition financing trends in your country under every sector and review whether every sector budget has fulfilled their commitments to nutrition
• Review the immediate funding need and funding gap, and set financing targets for underfunded priorities that need support
• Maximize government programs by integrating nutrition actions and identify new and innovative sources of financing

This resource was co-developed by FCDP and SUN Regional Hubs for Francophone Africa, Anglophone Africa, and the Convergence Hub, with contributions from Tendai Gunda, Tetteh Ogum, Eve Gossiaux, Andoniaina Brice and Zahra Inayat.

For a French translation of this page, click here.

FCDP is a SUN Movement resource available to all 66 SUN Countries. The platform aims to transform the nutrition financing landscape by inspiring and igniting government leaders to elevate nutrition financing as a priority and accelerate impact across sectors.

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The Government of Somalia through the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), with the support of the Scaling-Up Nutrition (SUN) – Finance Capacity Development Platform (FCDP), convened an inception workshop to address the critical challenges to sustainable nutrition financing, focusing on establishing a roadmap for resource mobilization and prioritization in the country. The event brought together key stakeholders from government and international organizations to deliberate on strategies for financing nutrition interventions. The main objective of the workshop was to address the pressing issue of financing nutrition in Somalia.

FCDP is a SUN Movement resource available to all 66 SUN Countries. The platform aims to transform the nutrition financing landscape by inspiring and igniting government leaders to elevate nutrition financing as a priority and accelerate impact across sectors.

The post Workshop Report: Importance of Sustainable Nutrition Financing in Somalia appeared first on Results for Development.

FCDP is a SUN Movement resource available to all 66 SUN Countries. The platform aims to transform the nutrition financing landscape by inspiring and igniting government leaders to elevate nutrition financing as a priority and accelerate impact across sectors.

The post Pathways to sustainable nutrition financing in Pakistan appeared first on Results for Development.

FCDP a donc fourni une assistance au CNDN pour l’examen des processus budgétaires du gouvernement pour la nutrition dans 12 ministères sectoriels et l’analyse des données sur la planification stratégique et les dépenses effectuées dans le cadre de la mise en œuvre du PSMN. L’étude a permis d’identifier les déficits de financement et les interventions les plus touchées. L’évaluation des dépenses du gouvernement pour les interventions du PSMN a également permis de mettre en évidence les domaines prioritaires nécessaires pour améliorer de manière holistique et durable le financement de la mise en œuvre du PSMN, qui sont documentés dans le rapport.

Veuillez contacter Cheickna Toure à ctoure@r4d.org si vous avez des questions ou des commentaires sur ce rapport.

FCDP est une ressource du Mouvement SUN disponible pour les 66 pays SUN. La plateforme vise à transformer le paysage du financement de la nutrition en inspirant et en incitant les dirigeants gouvernementaux à faire du financement de la nutrition une priorité et à accélérer l’impact dans tous les secteurs.

En savoir plus sur la FCDP.

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