First Lady welcomes new approach in school feeding

KARAMOJA

The First Lady and Minister of Education and Sports, Mrs Janet Museveni, has welcomed a proposal from the Ministry of Karamoja Affairs to re-model the ‘Karamoja Feeds Karamoja' initiative from the approach of growing maize at Namalu Prisons farm to purchasing food from farmer organisations in the region for the school feeding programme.

She said using the available funds to buy food from Karimojong farmers to feed school children in the region is a wise idea because it will grow more food so that they can earn an income.

It is hoped that with time they will become independent and continue to grow more food even for markets elsewhere. Mrs Museveni and the Minister of State for Primary Education, Rosemary Seninde, last Thursday met a team led by the Minister for Karamoja Affairs, Eng. John Byabagambi, to discuss remodelling of the ‘Karamoja Feeds Karamoja' initiative, which she launched in 2015 while still Minister for Karamoja Affairs.

Other dignitaries at the meeting included the World Food Programme (WFP) country director El-Khidir Daloum, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) country representative Antonio Querido and technical officers from the two ministries.

Proposed road map
According to a release from the First Lady's office, Peter Haag, a consultant hired by WFP, briefed the meeting on the proposed road map for pro-smallholder home-grown school feeding for Karamoja region and possible transition to a national school feeding programme in Uganda.

Best practices, especially in respect to the role of the Government, parents and other stakeholders in school feeding were also shared from a benchmarking visit made by a multi-sectoral policy and technical team led by Seninde to the WFP Centre of Excellence Against Hunger in Brazil last year.

The brief revealed that the Brazilian government, which launched its school feeding campaign in 1955, now allocates 30% of its resources to the national school feeding programme to buy food from small family farmers and it currently feeds over 42 million students on a daily basis.

During the discussion, Byabagambi said his ministry has not found it sustainable to continue growing maize at Namalu Prisons farm because it is not cost-effective. He said every year, the ministry spends a substantial amount of money on growing maize at the prisons farm, but it only returns between 300 and 250 metric tonnes of maize flour owing to various reasons including the harsh weather conditions, pests, and thefts.

El-Khidir Daloum reported that WFP wants to invest all the funding available to them into the country with the smallholder farmers. "We want to make the Karimojong know that they are not hopeless and that they can live on agriculture.

He said although one has to have patience with transformation, it also requires an aggressive push to promote agriculture as a business.

Querido said a number of resources that go into the agriculture sector are not tied to a concrete programme and pledged to continue to be part of the discussion to see how the agriculture sector can look into their smallholder policy and tie it to school feeding.

He called for an integrated approach by various ministries to link education, production and nutrition. An inter-ministerial meeting to discuss this proposal further is slated for early this month.