School feeding programme raises hope for poor children

Against the backdrop of the recent launch of the Nigerian Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSF), which targets free meals for 24 million pupils, FELIX KHANOBA examines the potentials of the scheme in improving child health as well as boosting enrolment across schools in the country.
It is no more news that every year, thousands of children drop out of school in Nigeria as a result of poverty, malnutrition and illness.

This development, which has resulted in the over 10.5 million out-of-school children that roam on the streets on daily basis, is not helped by the recent rank­ing of Nigeria as the third largest population of chron­ically undernourished chil­dren in the world.
Also, a survey conducted by the Federal Ministry of Education, Abuja, in col­laboration with the United Nations International Chil­dren’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and other in­ternational partners, shows that 80 per cent of children in primary schools in Ni­geria were under weight, with only 14 per cent hav­ing normal weight.
While the Federal Gov­ernment had in the recent past introduced various schemes like the free educa­tion, ‘Almajiri’ programme, girl-child education, among others, to address some of these challenges, such pro­grammes seem to have only succeeded in scratching the surface of the problems.
However , the recent launch of the Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSF) by Vice President Yemi Osibanjo as part of a 500 billion Naira funded Social Investment Pro­gramme announced by the present administration to tackle poverty and improve the health and education of children, appears to have raised hope for many.
Speaking at the event in Abuja at the weekend, the Vice President said, “Today we lay an important build­ing block in securing our future by mapping out the implementation plan to ensure that even the most disadvantaged children are free from malnutrition.”
The HGSF programme, which aims to provide free school meals with food procured from local small­holder farmers seeks to strengthen communities across the country by in­creasing school enrolment and completion.
It is also designed to im­prove child nutrition and strengthening local agricul­tural economies by provid­ing a school feeding market in which farmers can sell their produce.
The HGSF which will support state governments to collectively feed over 24 million school children, will be the largest school feeding programme of its kind in Africa and address the growing rate of out-of-school children in the country.
Although the total num­ber of pupils in the country has risen within the last decade, the inability of en­rolment to keep pace with rapid population growth has led to a situation where one out of every three chil­dren is out of school.
This problem, which is said to be largely caused by poverty, has continued to take a toll not only on the affected school-age chil­dren but also the entire na­tion at large.
But experts say school feeding programme as a social protection measure for poor and vulnerable communities will see to the improvement in education through increased enrol­ment, reduced absentee­ism, and enhanced gender equality.
For example primary school enrolment in Osun State, where school feeding programme was introduced few years ago, has in­creased by 28 percent since the commencement of free school meals scheme.
According to the Im­perial College London’s Partnership for Child De­velopment (PCD), which is providing technical sup­port to the Nigerian HGSF, policy makers are seeing school feeding as a means to tackle health and nu­trition issues caused by under-nutrition or obesity caused by over nutrition, even as it listed other na­tions the free meal scheme has become a success.
In Ghana, the govern­ment uses a digital school meals planner to develop nutritionally balanced school meals using local in­gredients.
This benefits both rural economies and school chil­dren alike as children ben­efit from nutritious fresh food and farmers benefit from being able to sell their produce a new market.
In Brazil, for example, it is federal law that 30 per cent of food for school meals is procured from small family-run farms while in Namibia, many communi­ties are expected to provide fuel, cooking utensils and storerooms.
Also, PCD listed indirect benefits of school feeding to include employment opportunities. For exam­ple, in Chile, low-income mothers are given catering training. School feeding can also mean increased income and training for smallholder farmers; as well as complementary school health activities, as in both Mexico and Brazil where parents are taught about the importance of nutritionally balanced di­ets.