Table 3.

Coalition attributes, beliefs, resources and strategies

	Nutrition/stunting coalition	Food security/hunger coalition
Coalition attributes	Largely international in genesis and organizational makeup	Largely national grouping including the government executive
	Advocacy network; support shared causes, motivated by shared values	Political network; both beliefs and political/economic interests important
	Professional network; epistemic community, motivated by shared interpretation of knowledge	Professional network; epistemic community, motivated by shared interpretation of knowledge
	Moral or economic imperative of reducing child malnutrition	Political imperative of maintaining the social contract
Normative core beliefs	Set of ideas around providing help to people and doing social good	Zambian Humanism as the national philosophy, explicitly rejecting both the capitalist and communist models
	Development approach that sees assistance largely as supporting state intervention; open to market-led approaches to improving nutrition	Socialist in its outlook, with centre-left socialist political parties ruling
		Increasingly market-led due to external pressures and political imperatives
Policy core beliefs	Malnutrition as lack of a diet quality and freedom from disease leading to stunting	Malnutrition as a lack of calories leading to hunger
	Distance themselves from hunger as too simplistic	Yet to see their role in broader malnutrition issues
	Poor, rural communities of most concern, particularly women	Poor, rural communities of most concern, particularly farmers
Secondary policy beliefs	Addressing the nexus of a lack of diet quality and access to health services and adequate child care as the answer	Producing more staple food (maize) as the answer
		Maize farmers (mostly male) as the key target group
	Food producers (farmers) and child carers (mostly female) as the target group	Sector-based agriculture programmes as the administrative setup
	Multisectoral co-ordination as the administrative setup
Resources	Nutrition policy action largely funded by international donor resources	Food security policy largely nationally funded, taking up to 80% of the agriculture budget
	National ministries have minor nutrition departments with funding for salaries but little for programmes	Any focus on nutrition more broadly than calories in written policy is largely unfunded in practice
Strategies	Frame a narrative that speaks to human and economic development	Maintain ‘business as usual’ agriculture policy
	Challenge the primacy of maize in a diet diversity/quality narrative	Update policy approach with new technology (e-vouchers for a wider range of inputs)
	Increase awareness of nutrition statistics	Maintain funding through government budgets (in the face of opposition to agricultural subsidies by international donors)
	Fund nutrition programmes through donor support