Building Multisectoral Nutrition Systems: The Roles and Experiences of Boundary‐Crossing Actors in Four African Countries

Fifty‐four countries have signed up for the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement and committed to using a multisectoral approach, one with many challenges. Here we describe the results of action research to identify and address the challenges, in four of the African SUN countries: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali and Uganda. Our theoretical orientation is to view the many multisectoral actors and organizations as complex adaptive systems; our role and mandate is to identify the multisectoral system requirements and bottlenecks, stimulate reflection among key stakeholders and help initiate appropriate actions; our data is derived from participant‐observations. Three key findings are discussed: 1) System level requirements for a multisectoral approach consist of twelve components, in addition to the coordinating committees; 2) All four countries face challenges in all twelve components; 3) Boundary‐crossing actors have helped address these challenges in all four countries through sensitizing concepts, knowledge and alliance brokering, consensus and conflict management and participation in operational tasks for reciprocity and relationship building. Further research to clarify the roles,strategies and skills of boundary‐crossing actors is needed in order to help stakeholders work effectively within complex adaptive systems.