How home-grown feeding can address hunger in schools

By Michael Dunford

In the main towns of Karamoja - on the quiet streets or in the schools, hospitals and government offices in the region - almost every learned person you meet has a personal story about how school meals helped them get an education.

Francis Lomer, an orphan, is one of them. Nobody in his family particularly cared about whether he started school or not and so he spent his time in the wild, looking after animals.

"Often times, however," he adds, "I saw children go to school, carrying plates and cups and soon I heard they were being provided with food. I said to myself, ‘Why should I stay hungry in the bush? Let me follow them to school.'"

Francis started late, in Primary 2. Six years later he came top of his 2012 PLE class at Moroto Municipal Primary School, with 10 aggregates and is now performing well in secondary school in Manafwa district.

Magdalene Komol, a senior nursing officer at Nadunget Health Centre III, has a similar story, and says there was also no plan for her to attend school at first.  That changed after her mother saw other pupils at the Roman Catholic mission. Magdalene joined Kangole Girls Primary School three years late, but that hardly mattered.

"The missionaries gave us food - I recall peas and canned fish - and it made it easy for me to stay in school," she says. "I did not know how to read or write, but I learnt. At some point, my father wanted me to quit school and get married, but I refused, my mother supporting me."

WFP and some other actors have been providing school meals in Karamoja for decades and there is solid evidence that meals attract children to school. Today, WFP continues providing school meals in Karamoja at the request of the Government, with these five main objectives: to encourage children to enroll and attend class regularly, to prevent them from dropping out of school, to enable them learn more easily, and to assist the Government in achieving its overall education objectives in the region.

WFP school meals are also a safety net; enabling parents to feel reassured that their children have nutritious food to eat even during times of food insecurity, while enhancing access to a social service, education. Access to social services is one of the four focus areas of the UN joint strategy for building resilience in Karamoja.

Furthermore, school meals have nutrition and economic benefits that carry on into the future. When school meals are combined with vitamin and mineral enrichment, as we strive to do at WFP, they provide an opportunity for children who may be stunted when they enroll in Primary One to recover their potential in terms of body size and cognitive development.

Later on, when these children grow up, they then have a better chance to participate in learning opportunities, to apply their knowledge and to have good health and productive careers.

School meals, therefore, are a critical tool for Uganda to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and Zero Hunger, as well as objectives of the Vision 2040.

It will continue to be necessary for WFP to provide school meals in Karamoja over the next few years given the overlapping forms of malnutrition in the area and other inter-connected root causes of food insecurity and underdevelopment.

However, as the African Union (AU) marks its first Africa Day for School Feeding today with a focus on home-grown school meals - in reference to food produced and purchased within a country to the extent possible - WFP is pleased to be part of an important transition in Uganda. We are working towards handing over the school meals programme to the Government by 2021.

The process began last year. The Office of the Prime Minister supplied 20% of all cereals needed for WFP's school meals in Karamoja during school year, through its Karamoja feeds Karamoja programme.

Over the next five years, WFP will continue to provide logistics and technical support in order for this programme to increase its supplies, while gradually reducing our own direct food assistance.

WFP and the Government will work to expand linkages between schools and local production while testing options to increase dietary diversity and improve the nutritional value of the school meals, for example through community-managed gardens.

Already, 28 countries - including Brazil, India, Chile, Thailand and Ghana - have been able to transition from WFP-assisted school feeding to sustainable national programmes.

Home-grown school feeding is a continental strategy for the AU, intended to enhance education while boosting income generation and entrepreneurship in local communities.

This inaugural African Day for School Feeding highlights the nations of the AU coming together to recognize school meals as the world's most widely-used social safety net.

The writer is the Country Director, UN World Food Programme