Continental commitment by African Governments to school feeding
Spurring innovation, food safety and quality capacity strengthening and economic resilience
This year’s Africa Day of School Feeding comes at the heels of the first ever Future of Food Safety Conference held at the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Conference, co-sponsored by the AU, the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), was attended by over 700 representatives from governments, international agencies and civil society. A key objective was to analyze the economic imperative of investing in safe foods and the importance of harmonizing food safety regulations and policies in Africa.
Africa Day of School Feeding, the main celebrations for which this year will be held in in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, offers an opportunity to mark the progress made in the 39 African nations that have school feeding programmes, with a special focus on ‘home-grown school feeding programmes’. 21 countries in the region have home-grown initiatives which link local agricultural production to purchase for local school feeding, with a clear intent to benefit farmers and communities as well as children.
Cost-benefit analysis studies carried out by WFP and partners have shown that every dollar invested in school feeding programmes can yield up to 10 dollars in improved health, education and productivity.
Globally, 54 countries are recipients of WFP school feeding programmes and technical assistance to the government, with over half of them in Africa, feeding the dreams and minds of future generations.
African youth has the potential and agency to succeed. However, WFP, African Governments and other public and private sector stakeholders are the catalyst this agency to be exercised, hopefully helping to lay the foundation for communities where the youth of today can live and thrive as productive adults.
WFP’s mandate towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 on Zero Hunger and improved nutrition through partnerships works in the direction of realizing the inalienable rights of children to safe, quality and nutritious foods through activities carried out in our school feeding programmes.
For this reason, ensuring the safety and quality of the food children receive in school — including by building the capacity of various stakeholders: school children, school workers, public health workers and Governments, to name a few — is a fundamental part of our work.
From Kenya to Egypt to Nigeria and everywhere in between, the impact of WFP-supported schools have proven to be not just a short term solution to hunger but a powerful tool to develop local economies and build the resilience of communities.
In Kenya, the Government took full ownership of the school feeding programme, now providing hot meals to over 1 million children across the country. WFP currently provides capacity development support to the country’s School Meals and Nutrition Strategy 2017–2022.
Clear implementation guidelines were jointly formulated by the Ministries of Health, Education and WFP with the objective of ensuring the food consumed in learning institutions meets required safety and quality standards. The guidelines also provide technical support to food suppliers, school and public health officers.
Some additional food safety and quality implementation initiatives in Kenya include the training and capacity building of public health officers, school board members and cooks, the donation of food safety testing kits and the establishment of 17 mini-laboratories in three counties.
The North Africa region presents a challenging and fragile setting with a wide range of development and humanitarian challenges, including inequitable development pathways, water scarcity and land degradation, limited production potential, dependence on food imports, increasing poverty, double burden of malnutrition and conflict-induced crises. However, there is a recognition of the bold role of education and a protective and nurturing environment as drivers of development.
Thus, WFP leverages school feeding programmes as a key social protection and social inclusion platform in support of the most vulnerable children and communities.
For example in Tunisia, WFP works closely with the Government to support the piloting of innovative projects related to school feeding for better efficiency and accountability, while also supporting local development, in line with a home-grown approach. The first pilot central kitchen for primary school canteens became operational in 2018 and is now serving warm safe, quality and nutritious lunches every school day to over 600 children.
Additionally, WFP supports the Ministry of Education in the design and implementation of a School Food Bank (SFB) system utilizing blockchain technology. The SFB aims to improve supply chain management, increase food safety and prevent stock-outs, thus providing a framework for channeling in-kind donations of non-perishable and semi-perishable food products from Tunisian private sector partners.
Further north in Algeria, in the Sahrawi refugee camps, WFP works with partners to relieve short-term hunger by distributing a mid-morning snack in schools and kindergartens. In addition, food safety related efforts including deworming and sensitization campaigns and school kitchens rehabilitation were carried out by WFP in collaboration with local partners.
In Egypt, community schools, which are often the centre of community life in the villages, transform into ‘community hubs’ in support of the technology-centric National Education Strategy, becoming an avenue for integrated development services, resources and knowledge extension to women, men, adolescents, children and persons with disabilities. The main objectives are improving the knowledge and skills of community groups through enhanced access to information resources, increasing socio-economic opportunities for vulnerable communities, and providing a platform for coordination of development interventions.
In Sudan, WFP’s school feeding programme provides approximately one million children across 11 states with daily hot meals, with the direct involvement of the local community. The programme also provides take-home rations for girls in targeted localities with alarming gender disparities.
WFP is exploring new approaches to tailor the programme to meet the specific needs within each country such as the introduction of fortified snacks for those localities with the potential threat of sudden onset of displacements.
These new approaches will aim at enhancing food safety and the nutrition sensitivity of the school feeding programme and strengthening resilience among targeted students and communities.
In West Africa, WFP conducted a food safety and quality training utilizing the Nutrifami app in the region of Matam, Senegal. Through the initiative, 247 cooks from 236 schools supported by WFP and 211 canteen managers from 150 schools were trained.
Additionally, each school received training materials to disseminate the knowledge. Future plans include the distribution of tablets to each school to train other cooks and school workers with the Nutrifami digital application.
In Nigeria, the home-grown school feeding programme is an example of a large-scale nationally-led programme, with almost 100,000 women participating, and 6 million locally-sourced eggs and 80 metric tons of fish being consumed by 9.2 million schoolchildren across the nation every week.
The African Union’s continued support of food safety and quality and school feeding in the continent along with WFP is a beautiful marriage that hopefully will bear the fruit of African youth who will exceed their potential and be the pioneers for solving the challenges of tomorrow.
