EXERCISE 5: Identify and know the key ‘decision makers’ at the various administrative levels

At this stage, the team should have good knowledge of the various decision makers along the implementation chain. Focal points working in the respective sectors can help the NIPN team to identify them.

Decision makers are not necessarily limited to policy makers: programme planners and implementation officers are other actors along the implementation chain who are also making decisions to improve nutrition actions at their level.

Categorising the decisions makers, according to the administrative level at which they intervene and according to the type of decisions they can make, will help to assess the diversity of the NIPN stakeholders’ needs.

A further stakeholder mapping exercise will help to define the target audiences, the policy relevance of the questions to them, their level of interest and level of influence in the specific nutrition policy questions. This is important in order to fine-tune and align the ‘storyline’ of the findings with each target audience of decision makers (for an example of this exercise, see section 4.1, page 3).