It is important to understand who the current or potential nutrition stakeholders are and their priorities to get a broad picture of countries’ nutrition landscapes and engage stakeholders early in the process of scaling up nutrition. It will also help ensure that important issues, such as gender and disability, are included in discussions from the outset.

The stakeholder mapping exercise generally happens prior to development of the multisectoral nutrition plan (MSNP)/common results framework (CRF) and thus helps to gain stakeholder involvement, engagement and input early on, which will improve buy-in throughout the planning and implementation process. The stakeholder consultation phase generally happens after the mapping exercise and can be used to both validate the findings from the mapping/contextual analysis and engage stakeholders in the multisectoral planning process. The five sectors most commonly implementing nutrition-related activities are: health; education; water, sanitation and hygiene; social protection; and agriculture.