Topic ID No.: 2026-G07
Title of research topic:
Institutional and Behavioural Drivers of Nutrition Programme Success in Malawi
Description:
Food insecurity remains one of the most pressing challenges in sub-Saharan Africa. Recent food and nutrition security assessments reveal a grim picture, with a large share of the population affected by food insecurity. Within this context, malnutrition—particularly micronutrient deficiencies or “hidden hunger”—continues to impose a severe public health and human development burden. The consequences are especially critical for children and nursing mothers, for whom inadequate dietary quality undermines health, productivity, and long-term human capital formation.
In the southern corn of Africa, Malawi represents one of the countries where food insecurity remains prevalent. Although the country has implemented a range of large-scale, multi-sectoral nutrition initiatives—such as biofortification programmes, social protection transfers, and the multi-stakeholder coordination mechanisms established under the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement—progress in improving dietary quality remains uneven. In many districts, chronic malnutrition and hidden hunger persist despite the apparent availability of resources and awareness campaigns.
Many of these programmes are highly complex, and their behavioural dimensions—such as household decision-making, food preferences, and intra-household resource allocation—are difficult to measure and therefore often poorly understood. This limits the effectiveness and sustainability of these interventions.
Target region or country (if applicable):
Malawi
Topic background information / scientific relevance:
Chronic malnutrition remains a significant public health burden in Malawi, hindering human capital development. To combat this, the country has implemented numerous large-scale, multi-sectoral nutrition programmes (e.g., those addressing poverty via transfers, improving supply through biofortification, and increasing demand via nutrition education). Despite these targeted efforts, which address the conventional determinants of malnutrition, progress in key dietary quality outcome indicators remains slow.
This underperformance suggests that the challenge may lie in deeper institutional and behavioural mechanisms that determine implementation effectiveness. Current research has largely focused on explaining why nutrition interventions fail, often emphasizing program inefficiencies or behavioural non-compliance. However, limited attention has been given to understanding why and how certain interventions succeed—particularly how they manage to overcome governance constraints and achieve sustained behavioural change at the household level.
The proposed research addresses this gap by integrating insights from institutional economics and behavioural economics to analyse both the governance arrangements and the behavioural dynamics that underpin successful nutrition programmes in Malawi. By identifying and studying these success cases, the research will uncover the institutional innovations, coordination strategies, and household-level behavioural shifts that contribute to improved dietary outcomes despite contextual challenges.
Moving beyond the traditional dichotomy of policy failure versus behavioural resistance, this study will provide a systems-oriented understanding of the conditions under which nutrition programmes are most effective, thereby offering an empirical and conceptual foundation for the design of more adaptive, well-coordinated, and behaviourally informed nutrition policies in Malawi and similar contexts.
Research objectives:
The main objective of this research is to understand why and how certain areas in Malawi have achieved measurable improvements in dietary quality, and what institutional and behavioural mechanisms explain these successes. The specific objectives are to:
1. Analyse existing national datasets (e.g., DHS, LSMS, programme monitoring data) to identify spatial and temporal trends in dietary quality—measured through indicators such as dietary diversity and micronutrient adequacy—and associated nutrition outcomes across Malawi.
2. Conduct in-depth qualitative case studies in areas showing significant improvements (“positive deviants”) to explore the behavioural and social factors—such as intra-household decision-making, maternal feeding practices, and social norms—that have enabled and sustained improvements in dietary quality.
3. Examine programme governance and coordination in these areas to understand how institutional arrangements, leadership, and implementation strategies have overcome governance bottlenecks and created an enabling environment for behavioural change and nutrition improvement.
Required skills and qualifications of the applicant:
We welcome applications from candidates with backgrounds in: Agricultural economics, development economics, political science, or nutrition and health sciences. The applicant should have strong analytical and writing skills; experience in qualitative fieldwork and data science is an advantage.
Applicants should be motivated to work in multidisciplinary and applied research settings, with a commitment to understanding and addressing real-world challenges in nutrition and governance.
Contact person and institute in charge:
Prof. Dr. Regina Birner. University of Hohenheim. Department of Social and Institutional Change in Agricultural Development.