Child malnutrition remains a pressing public health challenge in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where approximately 148 million children are stunted and 45 million are wasted. Although often conceptualised as a persistent condition, evidence indicates that malnutrition among children under 5 years frequently follows seasonal patterns shaped by agricultural cycles, climatic variability and socioeconomic conditions. Current interventions have paid limited attention to the food system dynamics that underpin these fluctuations. Adopting a system perspective, this scoping review will synthesise existing evidence on the food system determinants of seasonal malnutrition in children under 5 years in SSA.

The review will be conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute methodological framework for scoping reviews and reported following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses - Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. A comprehensive search will be undertaken across electronic databases (Google Scholar, ProQuest Central, PubMed, Scopus and African Index Medicus) for literature published from 2015 onwards. Grey literature will also be sought from institutional repositories of the WHO, United Nations Children’s Fund, Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme. Screening of titles, abstracts and full texts will be performed independently by two reviewers using predefined eligibility criteria. Data extraction will capture study characteristics and food system determinants of seasonal malnutrition at micro, meso and macro levels. The Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems framework will guide the analysis and synthesis.

As this review involves analysis of previously published data, ethical approval is not required. Findings will be disseminated through a peer-reviewed publication and social media engagements. Results will inform the development of integrated system-based approaches to address seasonal malnutrition in children under five in SSA. The full study protocol, datasets and supplementary forms will be published in an open-access repository in compliance with the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reuse principles.

This scoping review protocol is registered with the Open Science Framework (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/RU4ZX).