The Operations Research and Impact Evaluation (ORIE) project, led by Oxford Policy Management, has contributed for the past five years to inform nutrition research and the policy debates in Nigeria and beyond.

ORIE provided operations research, impact evaluations, costing and cost effectiveness studies for the ambitious £52 million, six-year, Department for International Development (DFID)-funded Working to Improve Nutrition in Northern Nigeria (WINNN) programme, which supports the government to improve maternal, newborn and child nutrition in five northern states. ORIE worked closely with key federal and state government stakeholders to ensure that findings reached them and informed their policies.

ORIE also invests in strengthening the capacity of nutrition researchers working in Northern Nigeria, by providing funding to enable researchers to design and undertake their own research project with the ongoing support and guidance of a group of experienced international researchers.

Four research grants were provided (two in 2015, two in 2016) as a result of a competitive procurement process. The grants were accompanied by support activities, including ongoing informal support and guidance and formal training provided by ORIE’s researchers and Nigerian experts. These support activities were designed to strengthen data collection and analysis and to provide a forum for trouble-shooting as and when problems arose. The formal program included training in qualitative and quantitative research methods and the use of specialised software packages for data analysis.

The document summarises the projects and findings of the four successful research projects.