School Meals Coalition

The writing is on the wall in Nepal

SMC Secretariat — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 16:23:34 +0000

By Neera Sharma

In Nepal, the writing is on the wall: the World Food Programme is reducing its footprint of direct implementation and providing technical assistance to the government in managing the National School Meals Programme.

Between 2017 and 2022, the Government of Nepal stepped up its efforts to bankroll school meals, increasing its budget allocation five-fold, and signaling a serious change in its approach to education, health, and nutrition. It is a new approach that no longer prefers using a stick to coerce children to learn but invests in an enabling environment that can nurture children’s cognitive skills and learning capacity.

The vision that all children must eat lunch in school is gaining momentum across the country. Here some children from Nepal share a meal cooked for them in school. For the picture you can credit: WFP Nepal/Narendra Shrestha

While the vision that all children must eat lunch in school is gaining momentum across the country, the government’s commitment to make it happen is becoming visibly clear with Nepal’s decision to join the School Meals Coalition in 2021. Later, in the fiscal year 2023-2024, the Government prioritized school meals, injecting USD 87 million into the school meals, which translates to about six-percent of the total national education budget. It is also the second largest allocation in the education sector followed by the expenses allocated for teachers’ salaries.

This budget commitment is significant, considering the history of Nepal’s national programme. In 2008, the government, through the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, launched the diwa khaja karyakram (Midday School Meals) in five districts, reaching 250,000 children. Today, the Government of Nepal provides nutritious school meals to 3.3 million children, from pre-school to Grade 5, in 29,000 public schools across the country. The initiative now covers all 77 districts, including 100,000 students supported by WFP in three remote districts of SudurPaschim province.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Nepal was one of the few countries in South Asia to quickly provide school meals to children on their doorsteps to prevent child-malnutrition. Take-Home Rations were distributed with funding from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), benefitting more than 200,000 children from seven food-insecure districts of Karnali and Sudur Paschim provinces. “Collaborating with the School Meals Coalition soon after the COVID-19 pandemic is opening new doors for school meals in Nepal,” said Dr Hari Lamsal, Joint Secretary from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. “With the technical assistance from WFP, we are stepping up our commitments to effectively and sustainably implement the school meals programme.”

Nepal is expecting partnerships within the School Meals Coalition to also help strengthen its technical capacity, particularly in building capacities to fully equip schools currently not providing school meals. The Ministry of Education also has the School Meals Standard and Facilitation Guideline for Community Schools, which sets minimum nutrition standards, and guides the implementation and management of the national programme.

“We will need to establish the necessary practices and infrastructure as we step up our efforts. The good thing is we are expanding our school meals with the necessary support that will enable us to connect school meals to other sectors such as agriculture and climate action, stimulate local markets, promote women empowerment, and invest in nutrition gardens, which we can also use as community nutrition demonstration plots,” said Dr Lamsal.

Nepal will rely on support from the Coalition to generate evidence that will inform this scaling up alongside strengthening its institutional frameworks and community participation.

WFP Nepal Representative and Country Director, Mr Robert Kasca said: “The participation of communities, private sector and other development partners in the school meals programme is essential to create an enabling environment for government to take over, as WFP transitions from being a provider of food to focusing on technical assistance.

“The most important thing is to have an inclusive programme that has complete buy-in of all important stakeholders, local communities, smallholder farmers and local businesses included. When everyone has a say and can contribute to the scaling up and improvements in quality of school meals, this can help to sustain the programme.”

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Children’s Voices “Those with a lot of food should share their food with the poor”

SMC Secretariat — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 16:22:48 +0000

Miriam Ferreira believes that receiving nutritious meals in school will help her realise her dream of becoming a medical doctor. © WFP Mozambique.

My name is Miriam Dinaya Manuel Ferreira. I am nine years old and doing Grade Five at Namialo Primary School in Nampula Province, Mozambique. I like school and I am studying hard to become a medical doctor. School meals are an important part of my day at school because we receive nutritious food that helps us to have energy and participate in class.

Before we started receiving hot meals at school, we were getting raw food which they said our parents should cook for us at home. It was difficult because many families didn’t have anything at home to help with the cooking, such as salt and oil. Some families even struggled to get some firewood to cook foods that took a long time to cook. Now we are all happy because the food is cooked here and we all eat at school, learn, and then go home and play.

On each school-day, the school provides rice and beans, thick maize meal porridge (xima, a staple food for many sub- Saharan African countries) served with either beans or cassava leaves (matapa). My favourite food is rice and beans because it’s healthier and tastes good. The cooks add some carrots, cabbage, kale, tomatoes, and onions to make the beans more nutritious and tastier. I appreciate the food but wish we could also eat some fish and meat on other days. I think that will improve the nutrition our bodies and minds need since we are still growing and learning.

Remember that food is what we eat because it improves our health. It is not just eating because we have a mouth, we eat because we know that this food will be good for us, it will take us far. For example, fruits, vegetables, beans, and fish are particularly good for our health, especially that of children whose families struggle to make ends meet and cannot afford to buy nutritious foods. When they go home, they do odd jobs to contribute to their family income. They help people carry some bags, cans, and plastics to earn some money to give to their parents. Sometimes they work on people’s farms, and it hurts to see them working hard to help raise money for their upkeep, when they are just children supposed to be taken care of. But it is good that they can come to school to eat and learn. Despite our different backgrounds, we eat the same food together and we are all happy. Sometimes they even take some food home to give to their siblings and parents. I find that sad. I would like to advise those with a lot of food to remember the poor and share their food.

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The Big Interview: School meals signal a necessary shift in the food systems

SMC Secretariat — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 16:15:45 +0000

The Coalition Secretariat holds a one-on-one conversation with Mr Mehrdad Ehsani, Vice-President of the Africa Food Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation.

Vice-President of the Africa Food Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation, Mr. Mehrdad Ehsani. ©The Rockefeller Foundation.

The Rockefeller Foundation believes the School Meals Coalition is the best place where actors can launch their school meal initiatives and receive global support. The coalition offers a great opportunity to share learnings, best practices, and new innovations with 90 countries and development partners. In this conversation with Mr Mehrdad Ehsani, he describes the Coalition as a strategic platform for governments and partners planning to “up their game” in expanding their school meal programmes to provide more nutritious food to more children and beat the effects of climate change. He spoke to us ahead of the first School Meals Coalition Global Summit taking place in Paris on 18-19 October.

Q: Why is the school meals agenda so important now in the work of the Rockefeller Foundation?

A: We focused most of our historical agricultural development focused on fighting hunger and trying to improve the productivity of smallholder farmers. While there were some successes in Latin America and in Asia, and less so in Africa, we found that we needed to look deeper at how we can improve the wellbeing of people and communities, in totality. We wanted to avoid ending up with a food system that is a value-destroying sector, and it was important for us to include environmentally-friendly agricultural practices, as well as health and socioeconomic factors impacting millions of smallholder-farmers.

This got us thinking that while food security was important, we wanted to bring nutrition, sustainability, and regenerative agriculture into our work to connect these elements and create more opportunities for development. Our hypothesis was that the changes we wanted to see should be demand-driven to signal a shift in the food systems. But as you know, it’s difficult and expensive to influence a mass of decision-makers and billions of consumers; we didn’t have the kind of money required to push that agenda. We therefore thought it was more strategic to try and influence a few clients that control institutional markets and show them the power and benefits of shifting supply chains to make food more nutritious, more inclusive, and promoting local procurement and climate-resilient practices. We tried to be opportunistic in leveraging the power of school meals not to only promote children’s access to nutritious food, which is so important in these times of climate-induced hunger, but to also use the school meals market to signal a necessary shift in the food systems.

Q: Looking at the Foundation’s history and your vision for a holistic approach, how are you working to ensure that shift in the food systems happens?

A: The first step for us was to have a partner because we are not an implementer, and the World Food Programme (WFP) was the natural choice because we believe they procure the largest quantities of food in the world. It was important for us to leverage their capacity to wield the power of institutional markets, especially looking at how WFP is trusted and has the ear of governments. We saw an opportunity in this partnership to influence the procurement of food and drive an agenda that would be good for people and for the planet.

One of our focus areas around school meals is leveraging capacities to influence systems, whether it’s around measuring the quality of diet in schools for investors/funders to understand how that is impacting human health or working together to develop good food-purchasing standards that can guide countries. Working at country level, there are opportunities to create demonstrations that governments can, in a budget-neutral way, improve school menus. This helps to improve nutrition, build more sustainable and resilient agriculture, and promote local procurement, which then strengthens investment in school meals.

Q: In the School Meals ecosystem, the Coalition is the new kid on the block advocating for governments to expand their commitment to responsive school meals. What opportunities are you seeing being part of the Coalition…what are you bringing to this platform?

A: The issue of climate-smart school meals is pertinent right now, and it’s going to become even more pertinent going forward because new data is telling us that food-insecurity and undernourishment is growing in sub–Saharan Africa and Asia among children.

The Rockefeller Foundation is supporting Governments such as Rwanda to help them improve nutrition of school menus. © The Rockefeller Foundation

School meal programmes are an effective safety net to help countries tackle many problems, such as child-malnutrition and can help build communities’ resilience through support to smallholder-farmers and providing schools as markets for their produce.

We know that these climate-induced shocks and turbulences are going to worsen. Given that 87% of the calories from cereals are from the Big Three — wheat, rice, and maize – and just over a half a dozen countries produce the majority of this for the world, the global food system is then vulnerable to climate change. In any given year, production will be impacted in one or two of these mega-producing countries. Supply shocks trigger unhealthy dynamics such as hoarding of food, speculation, and export bans which all conspire to inflate food prices that disproportionally affects low-income families who spend a higher percentage of their household income on food.

By advocating for climate-smart school meals, we are simply saying on one hand, let’s make sure we cover as many of our vulnerable children as possible with a social safety net. On the other hand, we can use the demand side from school meals to drive resilience in our food systems, help farmers to adapt to extreme climatic conditions, for example switching from farming rice to millet, where appropriate, which needs 22 times less water.

We can use that demand to drive local procurement which will not only reduce the carbon footprint of shipping food halfway across the world, but will bring economic resilience to households that need it the most. We are promoting the need to support smallholder-farmers to strengthen conservation and rehabilitation practices around food production. Our aim is to build production and consumption patterns that are resilient, focused on nutrition, and inclusive of all groups of women and men. The discussion around climate finance is a big incentive for countries, and whatever we learn together with governments and other development partners, our aim is to see how this could feed into the Coalition. It should be considered by the larger family of countries because at the end of the day, if we want to move the needle at planetary scale, it’s not going to happen with a few countries; we must influence the whole family of countries at global level.

Q: What would you say to countries that choose to neglect school meals? What would be the cost of taking such a decision?

A: That would be a myopic decision!

We can learn from history, and we don’t have to go very far back to look at what happened in Syria following the three years of a climate-induced drought before the civil war. Due to drought, farmers left to look for work in cities but there was no work, discontentment grew, and it took one incident to set off what then became a civil war. While people were displaced in Syria, the World Food Programme spent one US dollar per day to feed one person and when they migrated to Germany, it cost the government USD 70 per day to provide all necessities such as housing, education, and other social assistance. We need to look at the effects that climate change can cause, and how hunger can bring long-term instability and a migration crisis. In the Coalition, we share these analyses and would like governments to always remember that prevention is more affordable than cure. School meal programmes are a stabilising factor. Science-based evidence does not lie, and in the case of school meals it’s telling us there are far-reaching socio-economic benefits countries can benefit from.

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Regional conference demonstrates ECOWAS strong commitment to school meals

SMC Secretariat — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 16:06:17 +0000

ECOWAS countries are making progress towards reaching all children with school meals. Up to 22.4 million children are now receiving school meals, and investment has increased from $450 million to $543 million from 2020 to 2022. © WFP West Africa Regional Office.

More than 70 government officials representing education, agriculture, gender, and social protection sectors attended the inaugural Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Regional Technical Conference on Homegrown School Feeding on 3-4 October in Dakar, Senegal.

Led by ECOWAS with support from the World Bank and the World Food Programme (WFP), the two-day conference, titled ‘Investing in home-grown school meals to strengthen human capital, women’s economic empowerment, and contribute to economic development,’ showcased significant progress in school meal programs in the region.

A total of 22.4 million children are now receiving school meals, and investment has increased from $450 million to $543 million from 2020 to 2022. Additionally, 83% of ECOWAS countries have established school-feeding policies, reaffirming their commitment to these programs. The conference highlighted the manifold benefits of Homegrown School Feeding, from improving education outcomes and addressing child malnutrition to empowering girls and women and promoting food sovereignty.

Key recommendations included:

Securing long-term government funding.
Enhancing data collection systems.
Promoting girls to stay in school and women’s economic empowerment.
Ensuring access to safe, high-quality, and affordable foods.

The call to action from the event includes ECOWAS support for the School Meals Coalition and organizing a follow-up technical conference and ministerial event in 2024. The Dakar conference has been instrumental in fostering collaboration, sharing knowledge, and shaping the future of school feeding programs in the ECOWAS region.

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Govt of Madagascar forges partnerships for school meals backed by local suppliers

SMC Secretariat — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 16:05:48 +0000

By Aina ANDRIANALIZAHA in Madagscar

The Malagasy Government is dreaming big on how to scale-up its homegrown school-feeding programme. They want to use the resources and capacities they have locally to drive their national school meals economy and are looking closely to explore new opportunities in the local food system to ensure sustainability in local supplies. There are thousands of vulnerable children in Madagascar, who leave home to attend school on an empty stomach or without eating adequate food. Given the dire circumstances, it is important that the food is delivered in schools on time and is fresh and more nutritious to tackle child-malnutrition.

Some of the participants at the national forum on school-feeding where stakeholders discussed local produce purchases for school meals. © WFP Madagascar

That is why on 4-5 September, the ministries of National Education; and Agriculture and Livestock, in partnership with the World Food Programme, organised a national forum on school-feeding to discuss local produce purchases for school meals in Madagascar. The forum was attended by multiple stakeholders, including representatives of Brazil, Honduras, Benin, Malawi, Zambia, DRC, and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) mission. Also in attendance were partners from national and international Non-Governmental Organisations working in school meals and others in areas of interest to the development of a national homegrown school-feeding programme in the country.

The national forum facilitated the sharing of best practices, experiences, opportunities, and challenges in the implementation of a homegrown school-feeding programme. It marks the Malagasy Government’s initial steps towards connecting various sectors, and multi-donor initiatives, as well as promoting peer-to-peer learning practices after it joined the School Meals Coalition in 2021. These partnerships will help the Government to accelerate the development of a national school feeding model based on local purchases.

According to Mr Jerry Randrianilanona, the Director of Basic Education and Early Childhood in the Ministry of Education in Madagascar, the forum demonstrated Government’s commitment to the Global School Meals Coalition and its goal to ensure that every child, on each day, receives a nutritious meal by 2030. “We are investing more in partnerships, in the spirit of the Coalition to strengthen initiatives for school feeding based on local production to ensure children can receive on time, locally produced and nutritious meals, and also use school feeding to drive the expansion of the local economy,” he said.

The national forum supported the Government to shape its commitments to school meals with a strong focus towards a sustainable transformation of the education, and health and nutrition systems. The Malagasy Government has committed to i). Scale up school feeding based on local procurement in the greater southern region of Madagascar by 2030, while annually increasing the government’s school feeding budget by 20%, ii). Ensure the sustainability of a national school feeding programme based on local procurement, iii). Expand socio-economic, and local nutrition and health development through local procurement from local producers for healthy, diverse, and nutritious school feeding, iv). To establish strengthened governance frameworks for scaling up the national school feeding programme based on local procurement; v). Improve school feeding based on local procurement as an action contributing to community resilience in the context of sustainable food production systems, and vi). Enhance strong, diverse, innovative, and collaborative partnerships.

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A Turning Point in school meals for Madagascar

SMC Secretariat — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 15:37:12 +0000

By Jerry Randrianilanona, Director of Basic Education and Early Childhood, Ministry of Education in Madagascar

Some of the local foods promoted by the Government for the school meals programme. ©WFP Madagascar

After we joined the School Meals Coalition in 2021, the Madagascar homegrown school feeding programme is making real progress. I remember from 2004 to 2020, our programme was based on centralised food purchases at the Ministry of Education through a public procurement procedure. We encountered problems, including incurring high costs due to transportation and high profit margins set by suppliers, unsatisfactory food safety, service delays, and losses in provisions during transportation. When the supply chain is ineffective, it is the children that suffer the most because some of the food does not reach schools on time.

Our turning point was when we joined the School Meals Coalition. Through learning from other countries, we adopted a new approach to school feeding, which is based on cash transfers to local suppliers. We liked the idea of having funds allocated for school feeding directly transferred from the public treasury to the accounts of each local suppliers. That was a game-changer! This new approach is ensuring we can buy local products at affordable prices. And some may ask: how is that important in these tough economic times? When governments improve school meals governance systems and transparency, they can grow the local economy by increasing the income of small, local producers. With the digitisation of money transfers, governments can also improve tracking of payments, understand how the money is being utilised and its effectiveness in addressing challenges.

This new way of working has empowered the local Community Management Committee (FEFFI), to manage the school cafeteria within the school. The big news for us was their sense of ownership and commitment to support the government to reach more children with more nutritious food. For example, they are ensuring the implementation of basic nutrition principles to ensure that our children eat a mix of fresh foods, in particular vegetables.

Learners at a school in Madagascar enjoy their school lunch meal of rice and mixed vegetables. © WFP Madagascar

It’s paying off in the areas of increased enrolment rate and retention of our students. We have gone from reaching 103,000 students under the old approach to 425,000 students using the direct transfer approach. The solution to our problems lies in reducing the money we spent per child, without compromising the quality of meals by buying locally and I must add the tangible efforts by the Malagasy Government in financing its homegrown school feeding programme. Through our efforts in the area of financing, we would like to work with others to help us reach all children and make our programme sustainable. We don’t want to feed children today and stop tomorrow or concentrate on children in a few regions, leaving others. We see immense opportunities in the School Meals Coalition, which were not there before! That’s why we are eager to participate in the Paris Summit to share our commitments and connect with all partners in the school meals ecosystem for their support.

We would like to establish a framework for strengthened governance and leadership to scale up and improve the quality of our programme based on local purchases. That way, we can improve the school meal diet, promote healthy eating practices, stimulate innovation to drive our work in community resilience and grow our local economy. When our economy flourishes, we can generate enough revenue to scale up and reach all children with locally sourced fresh and nutritious meals.

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Tanzania MP champions adoption of school meal programs across the Commonwealth

SMC Secretariat — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 13:48:15 +0000

As over 700 members of parliament from 180 Commonwealth legislatures prepare to meet in Ghana, Tanzanian MP Neema Lugangira sets out why Commonwealth parliamentarians should prioritise school meals.

At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments in more than 190 countries closed educational institutions. This has had devastating effects on children’s learning and development, exacerbating the existing learning crisis, especially for children in the world’s poorest communities.

Malawi is one of the Commonwealth countries implementing a school meals programme, targeting over 600,000 children. More than 35,000 smallholder farmers are also being supported to sell their produce to over 476 rural schools, demonstrating the power of school meals in transforming rural economies. Photo: WFP Malawi.

To make matters worse, it was not just children’s learning that was affected when schools were shut down. Critical school-based services such as health screenings, immunisation and school meals were also disrupted. The absence of school meals shone a spotlight on the vital importance of the food that 388 million children were receiving every day at school until COVID robbed them of that opportunity.

However, we must also recognise the unfortunate fact that in most African countries, a larger percentage of schools do not have school meal programs and where schools do, not all children are enrolled on the program. This contributes to high absenteeism and ultimately poor academic performance.

Creation of the School Meals Coalition

In response to this crisis a group of 54 countries, representing all economic levels together with 60 partners, including UN agencies, academic partners, and civil society organisations, launched the School Meals Coalition.

As of September, 90 countries have joined the Coalition and 30 million more children are currently receiving a meal at school compared to early 2020. This is a remarkable achievement and one that points to the power of partnerships in mobilising collective efforts for pandemic recovery to accelerate progress and for systems transformation.

I was pleased to play my part in encouraging Tanzania to join the Coalition, which President Samia Suluhu Hassan announced in September 2022.

Commonwealth commitment

Commonwealth member states have been at the forefront of the push to scale up and improve school meals. And India was an early adopter when in 1925 the state of Tamil Nadu created a mid-day meal programme. Today India’s central government provides 120 million children in over 1.27 million schools with a daily meal, making it the largest school meal programme in the world.

Meanwhile, last month the largest school meals programme in Africa was launched by the Government of Kenya in Nairobi. The programme provides 400,000 daily lunches for children in 225 primary schools and early childhood development centres across the Kenyan capital. Speaking at the launch of the programme President William Ruto committed to extend the existing national feeding programme from 1.6 million children to 4 million saying, “We must eliminate the shame of hunger in our country”.

On the other side of the world, New Zealand reached a major milestone after the country delivered 100 million free and healthy school meals as part of its healthy school lunches programme. Canada is taking its first steps with plans to roll out the country’s first-ever national school food policy to increase access to nutritious meals for children at school.

These examples from India, Kenya, Canada, and New Zealand are just a snapshot of the growing support for and implementation of school meals across the 22 Commonwealth member states that have joined the School Meals Coalition.

More to be done

There is urgent work to be done in other Commonwealth member states where school feeding programmes could make a vital contribution to tackle the triple crisis of less learning, more poverty and worsening nutrition.

An analysis undertaken by the World Food Programme identified that 16 of the 60 countries which should prioritise school meals to population affected by acute hunger and malnutrition are Commonwealth member states.

Meanwhile, some Commonwealth countries have school meal programmes, but do not reach enough children. Of the 31 Commonwealth countries with school meal programmes for which data exists, 19 provide meals to less than half the children enrolled in primary school and 11 provide meals to less than a fifth.

Through the Agri Thamani Foundation, which I founded, we have partnered with Harvest Plus to launch the first of its kind “Scalable-School Meals Programme” in Bukoba and Missenyi districts of Kagera region, aiming to reach 150,000 children. Such steps are needed, and it is hoped that more interventions such as these will follow in various parts of all Commonwealth countries without national school feeding programmes.

Proven and Scalable

More than 40 million out of school children live in two Commonwealth member states, Nigeria, and Pakistan both of which have high rates of child stunting and poverty.

School meals can contribute to addressing such challenges, as well as improve school enrolment, children’s nutritional intake for good health, and support to local famers by guaranteeing a market for their produce. Unlike other solutions to complex challenges, school meals are proven to be technically feasible, cost-effective, and possible to deliver at scale.

This is why I am backing the School Meals Coalition’s aim to ensure that every child can receive a healthy, nutritious meal in school by 2030. The combination of an ambitious goal and the urgency for all countries to adopt school meals to address numerous challenges will demand an unprecedented mobilisation of political will and practical action.

I hope this essential tool will be received enthusiastically by my parliamentary peers from across the Commonwealth, and that we will commit to creating a Commonwealth of nations free from hunger and ignorance.

About the Author

Hon. Neema Lugangira is a Member of the Parliament of Tanzania and represents Africa on the IPNEd Global Executive Committee. She is also the founder of the Agri Thamani Foundation, which seeks to end malnutrition through education, championing school meals, promotion of traditional foods (farm to fork), nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions and nutrition advocacy across multi-sectors and multi-stakeholders.She has significant experience in leading national and international development projects, including overseeing the administration of agricultural and social-economic programmes and initiatives across Tanzania; and uses this experience to strategically position school meals as a key input for human capital development.

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Rwanda Champions Regional Scaling Up of School Meals

SMC Secretariat — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 11:29:57 +0000

The Coalition Secretariat holds a one-on-one conversation with the newly appointed Minister of Education in Rwanda, Honourable Gaspard Twagireyezu.

The launching of the Eastern African Regional School Meals Coalition Network in Kigali, Rwanda in June this year is a welcome development in the School Meals Coalition as the network of nine countries demonstrates its commitment to collectively reach universal access to school meals by 2030. Rwanda’s Minister of Education, Mr. Gaspard Twagirayezu says his country is championing an idea born in Helsinki, Finland, two years ago, to create regional networks that can strengthen regional cooperation in scaling up school meals. He shares his insights on the importance for the Eastern Africa region to put their heads together in ensuring every child receives at least one nutritious meal on each school day.

Rwanda was at the forefront of organising the launching of the Eastern African Regional School Meals Coalition, tell us why Rwanda is championing this initiative?

The Minister of Education in Rwanda, Honourable Gaspard Twagireyezu, speaking during the School Meals Powering Food Systems Transformation session hosted by the School Meals Coalition in Rome, Italy. Photo: SMC/Tsitsi Matope

We are passionate about achieving universal access to school meals and promoting partnerships to reach our goal as a region. Our School Feeding Policy supports this goal. Rwanda wants the region to become a shining example when it comes to delivering quality school meal programmes. To achieve that we must support each other, and that is why we have committed to become good partners in the School Meals Coalition. After our meeting in Helsinki, Finland, we decided to volunteer as a country, through the Ministry of Education, to bring together our colleagues from the Eastern Africa region to create a regional platform where we can collectively advance the school meals agenda. In June, in collaboration with the World Food Programme (WFP) we brought together nine countries that expressed interest to build a regional network of the School Meals Coalition. There are 21 countries in the East African block, and we would like our work and results to speak for themselves, to convince other remaining countries to also join the network.

What changes should the Coalition expect?

Network member countries standing stronger together in support of progress in school meals. We are targeting many areas, including improving the nutritional value of school meals, complementary services and partnerships that will stimulate the economy and social wellbeing of our region.

Our mission is to exchange solutions on how best we can sustainably grow School Meal Programmes looking at our own regional context. We would like to learn from each other, and this network is a very big asset to advance school meals especially when most countries are now at the expansion phase. When we launched the regional network, it was encouraging to see that the political will is there, and the issue is how fast can we all scale up and reach every child.

Through this network, we will demonstrate the power of regional cooperation in improving information and knowledge sharing, and our ability to champion and influence this to become a top regional agenda for all countries to join us on this life-changing journey.

One of the things we would want to work on for the future is the sustainability in our school feeding programmes, of course governments will still need to invest, but we also need to consider school feeding as one of the tools for education outcomes. In most cases, if you see different partners partnering with ministries of education, these partners are not necessarily partnering for school feeding. The network will demonstrate that school feeding is also part of the education system, and we are inviting different organisations to come and partner with us to deliver excellent school feeding programs. Education cuts across all sectors and therefore we should all contribute to efforts working to grow our human capital.

What would you say are threats to realising the goals of the regional network?

The shrinking fiscal space and limited financing is a big threat to meeting our main goal to collectively achieve universal access to school meals. In Rwanda we have made significant progress in providing meals to children in pre-primary, primary and secondary school and developed a ten-year financing strategy, but there are a lot of improvements that will come through learning from other countries. We have countries at different levels of progress. Some are progressively adding onto their numbers in terms of reach while others need technical and financial support. With financial support many countries can transition to self-financing in a few years. As a network, it is our responsibility to collectively seek new partnerships and mobilise resources to accelerate our programmes.

Another threat is how extreme weather events are causing long dry spells or drought and floods triggering hunger in some regions of countries such as Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan, and Ethiopia. This is where we need to ensure that where there is hunger, meals are not cut in schools. The network will contribute practical solutions to help build climate resilience and for all of us to be able to adapt to recurring extreme weather conditions.

The network is aware that we need to strengthen multiple interventions, including using the platform to advocate for more food assistance for school meals as a tool to promote undisrupted learning, foster peace, and the protection of children in countries in conflict such as Sudan. When kids are not in school and are not eating, that’s a big problem for the roll-out and expansion of school meals. However, it should not end there, that it is a problem, as a regional network we need to find solutions to make sure that nutritious meals are getting to the children and their learning is continuous.

You spoke of new partnerships and mobilising resources at regional level, tell us more about that strategy.

One of the things we would want the network to focus on is the sustainability of our school feeding programmes. Of course, governments are investing, but we have all learnt from crises such as the Covid-19, that we need partnerships that can support designing school-based programmes that promote resilience to enable schools and local communities to cope with shocks.

We would like to work more closely with partners such as the School Meals Coalition’s Research Consortium to generate new evidence showing the importance of investing in school feeding in the education system.

The network also needs to have partners to support innovations for funding of school meals, and our emphasis is on improving nutrition and shift eating habits of kids in our region. Our partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Rockefeller Foundation is having tremendous impact in doing exactly that, fostering healthy eating habits. We have scaled up fortified wholegrain maize meal from a pilot with 18 schools in 2021 to 81 in 2023 across Rwanda, and we needed this partnership to help us understand more on the impact of wholegrains to our efforts to improve the quality of our school meals. So far, we are noticing positive changes because the children say they are enjoying wholegrains, they are active in sports and attentive in class.

The network is mobilising partnerships from outside the region, in the region and in our respective countries. For example, we now know that school meal programmes have a positive effect on many sectors. As we scale up, programmes are generating many economic benefits such as creating jobs for women, improving incomes of smallholder farmers and local businesses by buying from them, increasing production of a variety of nutritious food, and creating centres of excellence where communities can learn about building climate-friendly schools and communities. When you strengthen such a value chain, as a network we aim to multiply social and economic benefits at community, country, and regional level.

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Govt of Somalia forges partnerships to scale up school meals

SMC Secretariat — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 15:11:41 +0000

By Maria Osman in Somalia

Participants at the Multisectoral Roundtable Meeting hosted by the Government in Mogadishu in August to discuss building a government-owned national homegrown school feeding programme. Photo:WFP/Petroc Wilton

The ministries of Education, Culture and Higher Education; Agriculture and Irrigation; and Finance in Somalia have signed a joint Declaration of Commitment to develop a roadmap and establish inter-ministerial coordination mechanisms for the effective implementation of the National Homegrown School Feeding programme. This was during a Multisectoral Roundtable Meeting hosted by the Federal Government of Somalia in Mogadishu on 16 August 2023, to lay a strong foundation of building a government-owned school feeding programme. The meeting brought together technical teams from the Ministries to discuss a partnership aimed at ensuring that every child in Somalia receives a healthy and nutritious meal in school by 2030.

The Government recognizes that investing in human capital development is critical for building long term resilience, and the school meals programme in Somalia is a strong example of human capital investment. These efforts require fostering partnerships with other ministries, UN Agencies, the civil society organisations, private sector, and other development partners working in Somalia.

During the discussions, the Government made bold commitments to take this initiative forward. Ms. Nuura Mustaf, State Minister of Education, Culture and Higher Education, expressed Government’s intent to “establish a strong sustainable national homegrown school feeding programme in Somalia as a flagship social protection initiative.” She committed to leading development and implementation of an inter-ministerial transition plan.

Also speaking at the meeting, the Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation, Mr. Ahmed Mathobe Nunow said school meals cannot be delivered in isolation; linkages with national food systems are critical. He emphasized that homegrown school meals (whereby ingredients are sourced from local producers and retailers) can promote sustainable agricultural practices, connect farmers to markets and provide stable income. The Minister called for bold action and confirmed the Ministry’s commitment to operationalize homegrown school feeding across Somalia.

Mr. Suleiman Omar, the Director General of the Ministry of Finance, acknowledged that sustainable financing and good programmatic design would be critical for success. The Ministry committed to allocating a contribution from the national budget for the school feeding programme.

The World Food Programme (WFP) Country Director in Somalia, Mr. El-Khidir Daloum confirmed WFP’s commitment to support transition to a nationally owned programme through technical assistance and support for resource mobilization and advocacy.

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Zambia taps into homegrown solutions to provide school meals to 4 million children

SMC Secretariat — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 15:10:04 +0000

By Chileshe Chilambwe in Zambia

Zambia will invest more funds to scale up the national Homegrown School Feeding programme, in view of a huge influx of children coming to school. This was after President Hakainde Hachilema declared free education last year.

According to the Minister of Education in Zambia, Mr. Douglas Munsaka Syakalima, the government is expecting to double the number of children receiving School Meals from the current 2 million to 4 million by 2026. He explained these calls for “homegrown thinking” to be able to sustainably scale up the national programme. The government is innovating the programme to include education on nutrition, promoting school nutrition gardens as well as introducing tree planting projects to strengthen climate action in schools.

Some learners at Gwembe Primary School in southern Zambia delight in their nutritious and delicious meals together, fostering not just nourishment but also a sense of community and shared moments. Photo: WFP/Nkole Mwape

“We would like the children, when they get home after school, to teach their parents what they are learning! But importantly, we would also like them to profoundly understand the importance of growing food for themselves, to feed their communities and advance food security efforts in the country.” Minister Syakalima said as schools teach the children to grow food, they are also imparting skills on the risks affecting food production the world over. “One such risk is the effects of climate change on agricultural production, particularly rain-fed agriculture, if we look at the context in Southern and East Africa region.

“To develop knowledge on how they can contribute towards reversing the effects of climate change, we are teaching them how to plant trees, including fruit trees, which will again provide more nutritious food in schools and promote projects such as bee keeping. We are starting early to plant and nurture the culture of growing trees among children for their long-term contribution in the fight to mitigate effects of climate change.” With about 10 million children in Zambian schools, the aim is to support each child to plant a tree they will look after, said Mr. Syakalima. Efforts by the Government of Zambia and partners, to expand and improve the quality of the country’s Home-grown School Feeding programme is generating multiple benefits to the children, their families, local communities, the country, and the whole region.

Meal time! some learners at Gwembe Primary School receive their lunch meal. Photo: WFP/ Nkole Mwape

At the global level, tree planting programmes remain critical as one strategy to combat climate change. Trees essentially act as carbon sinks contributing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but locally they have a powerful effect on mitigating rising temperatures, preserving the water table, and hosting biodiversity. It is however not enough to increase the supply of trees if demand will force people to cut them down again for cooking. This is why introducing efficient cooking solutions to reduce the amount of firewood used by schools and local communities or switching to clean cooking altogether is crucial.

Schools, acting as innovation hubs can showcase the benefits of clean cooking to families, inducing transformational change in the community. School-based climate action initiatives can also promote climate friendly agricultural practices, such as adopting climate resilient seed varieties and powering labour’s mechanization with renewables, to the local farmers that provide food to schools.

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