- The African Union has acknowledged that school feeding is an investment, not mere spending of national resources.
- According to AU, school feeding has short, medium- and long-term dividends to our children, and income to local communities.
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Health experts have called on the government to invest in school feeding programmes in the wake of climate change.
This comes as the country joined the rest of the World in marking the 8th Africa Day of School Feeding.
The day celebrated on March 1, is aimed to highlight the importance of investing in school feeding programmes, giving due consideration to backlogs created by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Since 2016, the African Day of School Feeding has been a rallying point, bringing together stakeholders from the public, private, civil society and multilateral sectors to galvanise political support for adopting and conducting school feeding programmes.
The World Food Programme in a statement said investing in school meals programmes can increase school enrolment rates by nine per cent and attendance by eight per cent, especially for children from poorer backgrounds.
WFP said social and economic inequalities persist in Kenya, with significant challenges to food and nutrition security driven by rapid population growth, climate change, stagnating agricultural production, gender inequalities and underperforming food systems.
“The actions already in place need to be extended to more comprehensive packages to effectively protect children from the multiple crises the world is facing,” Director of WFP’s School-Based Programmes Division Carmen Burbano said.
To maximise investments made in education, funding for programmes promoting the health and well-being of school-age children and adolescents must increase substantially, the WFP said.
The African Union has acknowledged that school feeding is an investment, not mere spending of national resources.
"Studies show school meals programmes are effective in increasing attendance among girls, reducing the chances of early marriage, child labour and early and teen pregnancies," WFP said.
According to AU, school feeding has short, medium- and long-term dividends to our children, and income to local communities who produce and trade in the food systems.
“With school feeding scaled up through effective procurement and supply chains, we would educate and improve livelihoods which otherwise, the children might be tempted to join armed groups and terrorist group,” AU said in a statement.
This year’s day will be used to take stock of the progress of ongoing initiatives at the continental, regional, and national levels in implementing homegrown school feeding and encouraging national commitments.
WFP has run a school feeding programme in Kenya since 1980, working with the Ministry of Education to provide nutritious meals to more than 1.5 million children in the most food-insecure areas.
The WFP notes that by April 2020, 42 countries in sub-Saharan Africa including Kenya had announced school closures, leaving an estimated 50 million children without access to education or school meals.