School food politics in Africa: Two Nigerian school feeding programs in comparative perspective

School Feeding Programs in Middle Childhood and Adolescence

Nigerian Federal government under the Muhammadu Buhari led-administration attempts to develop rural areas in Nigeria by introducing the Home-grown School Feeding (HGSF) Programme in 2016 in order to boost local agricultural production, create employment opportunities, reduce out-of-school children, boost nutrition and health status of schoolchildren, and ameliorate economic wellbeing of the rural areas as a strategy to grow and develop the Nigerian Economy. The study examines the linkages among School feeding Programme, smallholder farmers, and rural development in Nigeria. By comparing changes in agricultural productivity between treatment and control groups, the analysis reveals a positive but modest effect of the HGSF programme, with an R-squared value of 0.096 indicating that approximately 9.6% of the variability in agricultural output can be explained by the model. The findings align with existing literature that validates the role of school feeding programmes in enhancing agricultural productivity and food security. The study exposes the nation-wide impact of the policy given the huge investment in a single programme like the HGSF programme since implementation in the 35 states in Nigeria, including the Federal Capital Territory.

PROTOCOL: School feeding for improving the physical and psychosocial health of disadvantaged elementary school children

School Feeding Program (SFP) in Nigeria is expected to provide at least 33% of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for school children. This study was carried out to ascertain whether the school meal provided meets this recommendation, and also to compare the nutritional status of the school age children benefitting from the SFP with their counterparts in other public primary schools in the LGA. This study employed the simple random technique to select 10 public primary schools in Egbeda LGA of Ibadan. A descriptive cross-sectional design was used to evaluate the nutritional status of primary school pupils. Schools benefitting from the school feeding program were categorized as the experimental group while the schools not benefitting from the school feeding program were categorized as the control group. A 24-hour dietary recall was used to obtain data on all the foods consumed by the school-age children in the past 24 hours. The nutrient composition of the meals as analyzed using the Total Dietary Assessment (TDA) tool and compared with the requirements of their age group. The anthropometry indices of the school-age children were also obtained using a portable stadiometer and an electronic weighing scale. Analysis was done using the WHO Anthro software. The results revealed that 95% of the pupils did not meet 33% of their RDA for energy, protein, carbohydrate and total fat respectively. There was a significant difference in the level of nutrient adequacy between the two groups for energy, protein, thiamine, phosphorus and sodium. Also, the Anthropometry revealed more Normal weight children among the experimental group 141(71.6%) compared to the control group 56(28.6%). Keywords: School feeding, Total Dietary Assessment, Anthropometry.

Using the Eco‐Health approach, a local women's cooperative was paired with a rural school to provide traditional foods to children through a school feeding and nutrition education program. We investigated the effect of this program versus nutrition education alone on nutritional status, breakfast consumption and attitude towards traditional diets. Two elementary schools from the village of Aarsal, Lebanon participated in the study. At baseline and endpoint, height, weight, hemoglobin and breakfast recall were taken. All children received four nutrition education sessions and children from the intervention school received a daily school meal for 4 days/week for 5 months. Qualitative data were collected from meetings with parents. At baseline, stunting, overweight and anemia prevalence were at 8%, 20% and 6%, respectively. There was a significant decrease in anemia prevalence among schoolchildren taking part in the school feeding intervention (p<0.0001). Breakfast consumption habits improved at both schools with a significant decrease in number of children not consuming breakfast (p<0.001). Schoolchildren in the intervention school demonstrated improved attitudes towards traditional diet and healthy lifestyle practices. This school feeding program provides a potentially sustainable local model for school feeding programs in similar rural contexts in countries undergoing a nutrition transition.This research has been funded by Canada's International Development Research Center (IDRC).

Introduction Undernutrition is a major public health problem in developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Undernourished children are smaller and have low weight. To solve this issue, school feeding (corn-soya blend, vegetable oil) started in 1994 in Ethiopia. Thus, this scoping review aims to map the evidence relating to school feeding programs and their potential role in managing children`s nutrition in Ethiopia.Methods This scoping review is informed by the methodological framework of Arksey & O’Malley for scoping reviews and recommendations on the framework by Levac and colleagues. The databases searched included the Education Resources Information Centre, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, and Google Scholar. To ensure its comprehensive search, grey literature sources were searched. The search was undertaken on 26 April 2023. Studies on school feeding, such as coverage, and studies that evaluate the educational and nutritional impacts of school feeding in Ethiopia, regardless of study designs, were included. Reports (publications) about school feeding without scientific methodology were excluded.ResultTwenty-seven studies were included in this review. It includes cross-sectional, prospective cohort, laboratory-based analysis, experimental, case study, and qualitative study designs. The school feeding program results were inconclusive, while some indicate a positive effect on body mass index, height, thinness, anemia, weight, dropout rate, class attendance, and enrollment. The others showed that the school feeding program did not affect stunting, thinness, weight, hemoglobin level, enrollment, attendance, dropout rate, and academic achievement. Factors affecting school feeding programs negatively include poor quality food and financial constraints. However, no literature on school feeding program coverage was found.ConclusionSchool feeding programs improved nutritional status, and academic performance, although some studies show any effect. Poor-quality food provisions and financial constraints affect school feeding programs. There are mixed findings, and further research is required to determine the effect of school feeding programs conclusively. To ensure the program's sustainability, it should be supported by a national policy, and budget allocation is needed. In addition, more evidence should be generated to show the coverage of school feeding programs in Ethiopia.

School Feeding Programme (SFP) is the provision of food to primary day-school children. It is an intervention designed to support the education of children living in poverty and food insecure areas. It is viewed as a potential safety net and social support measure that help keep children in school and make them learn. The study was designed to establish the sustainability of school feeding programme in Zambia with specific focus on Western Zambia. A descriptive survey design was used. The study employed both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The instruments that were used in data collection included questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussion guides. This research was conducted in nine of the sixteen districts of Western Zambia. The sample consisted of four hundred fifteen respondents drawn from the targeted population. Simple sampling and purposive sampling procedures were used to select the respondents. Qualitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics while qualitative data were done using the thematic approach. The findings of the study revealed that SFP in most schools was not sustainable because it relied mostly on external support and also showed that the challenges faced the implementation of SFP were diverse. Few Schools that revealed SF was sustainable attributed the sustainability to the school projects they were engaged in. It was also disclosed that Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) was identified as the best option for effective and sustainable SFP. The study recommends the need for the government to revamp the production unit in all the schools; for correct assessment of local and national capacity, and the need for complimentary investment in local agricultural production to ensure smooth programme operation and sustainability.

Even in high-income countries like Israel, children have been particularly vulnerable to the surge in food insecurity driven by quarantines, unemployment, and economic hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under normal circumstances, School Feeding Programs (SFPs) can help to ensure child food security. In the wake of the pandemic, policy makers worldwide have been challenged to adapt national SFPs to provide nutritional support to children (and indirectly to their families) during extended school closures. Most national SFPs implemented contingency plans to ensure continued nutritional support for children. In Israel, where SFPs were largely suspended during long periods of mandated school closing, there was a loss of 30–50% of feeding days for the ~ 454,000 children enrolled in the program. The lack of emergency contingency planning and failure to maintain Israeli SFPs during school closures reveals longstanding structural policy flaws that hindered coordination between relevant ministries and authorities and impeded the mobilization of funds and existing programs to meet the emergent need. The school feeding law does not identify child food security as an explicit aim, there are no benchmarks for monitoring and evaluating the program to ensure that the food aid reaches the children most in need, even routinely, and the Ministry of Education had no obligation to maintain the program and to marshal data on the participants that could be acted upon in the emergency. Moreover, because Israeli SFPs are “selective”, in other words, implemented according to community risk (low-income, high poverty rate) and geographical factors, attendant stigma and financial burdens can make participation in the program less attractive to families and communities that need them the most. We argue that Israel should make urgent, long-term improvements to the SFPs as follows: First, eliminating childhood food insecurity should be made an explicit goal of legislation in the broader context of national social, health, and nutritional goals, and this includes ensuring SFPs are maintained during emergencies. Second, the government should assume responsibility for the routine assessment and data collection on food insecurity among Israeli children. Third, SFPs should be subjected to rigorous independent program evaluation. Finally, a “universal” SFP providing nutritious diets would likely improve the health of all Israeli children, across all socioeconomic backgrounds. These steps to guarantee that Israeli children have food to realize their full physical and cognitive potential would emphasize Israel’s firm commitment to support multiple dimensions of health, educational achievement, and societal values, to combat the complex and long-term consequences of the pandemic, and to prepare for the next one.

The research is on bridging the gap in school attendance between riverine and non-riverine areas: the home-grown school feeding. This survey-based study used an ex-pose-facto research approach to collect data from primary/elementary school teachers in the Ethiope-West and Warri-South-West senatorial zones of Delta State. The respondents were 489 primary 1–3 teachers spread across two LGAs. A questionnaire titled “School Attendance in Riverine and Non-Riverine (SARNA) was the instrument used to collect data. The instrument’s reliability was tested using the test re-test method on 20 teachers from other local government areas. Pearson r coefficient of .80 was obtained, thereby making the instrument reliable. Descriptive statistics were employed to address the research questions, while a t-test was utilised to test the hypotheses at a 0.5 significant level. The findings showed that school attendance improved with the school feeding programme. Therefore, the study recommended that the programme be continued through government funding, publicised, and improved feeding quality. It is also recommended that parents be encouraged to send their children to public primary schools so that they can benefit from the school feeding programme.

School feeding programs are ubiquitous. Benchmarking expenditures for school feeding is an important component of program accountability and sustainability. To analyze the costs of school feeding and the cost relative to education expenditure and other measures of economic growth. Data on the costs of school feeding were collected from multiple sources, including United Nations databases, gray literature, and published reviews. Relationships between costs of school feeding, costs of education, and GDP per capita were analyzed through standard linear regression. Data on costs of school feeding were obtained for 74 countries, including 12 high-income, 40 middle-income, and 22 in low-income countries. School feeding programs were found to cost US$173 per child per year, ranging from US$54 in low-income countries to US$693 in high-income countries. In high-income countries, school feeding costs per capita were on average equivalent to 11% of the per capita investments in primary education, compared with 19% in middle-income countries and 68% in low-income countries. In middle- and low-income countries, school feeding programs covered on average 18% and 13% of the children enrolled in primary school, respectively. The total budget for school feeding in low-income countries was found to be on average 11% of the estimated total primary school education budget, compared to 4% in middle-income countries. School feeding investments are targeted in low- and middle-income settings, reaching only a portion of primary schoolchildren, with total costs only a fraction of the overall investment in education. As countries get richer, school feeding costs become a much smaller proportion of education costs. The findings of this study provide an updated framework for benchmarking school feeding programs.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess stakeholder’s perceptions on the influence of school feeding programmes on pupil’s attendance and dropout rates in Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya. Methodology: The study adopted a mixed methods approach. The target population for this study was Tharaka Nithi County Education Officials, Headteachers, teachers, and parents of Grade three pupils in public schools. The data collection instruments included: questionnaires, interview guide, observation checklist and focus group discussion guide. Data were analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) Version 27. Quantitative data were analysed and presented in the form of frequencies and percentages. The qualitative data were presented in a narrative form in themes. Findings: The study established that stakeholders perceived that: school feeding programs significantly boosted pupils' class attendance; reduced absenteeism; and improved concentration and academic performance, while encouraging consistent school attendance. The schools’ feeding programs significantly reduced pupils dropout rates, and also enhanced academic performance. It was concluded that school feeding programs was perceived to significantly improve pupil attendance and reduced dropout rates. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The study was anchored on Abrahams Maslow's Hierarchy Theory of Human Motivation. There is need for the County Government and National Governments and NGOS to increase the school feeding programmes in ASAL schools. Vulnerable children in ASAL areas should be given special attention in school feeding programmes. School stakeholders should support the availability of feeding programmes in all the ASAL schools.

BackgroundProviding food through schools has well documented effects in terms of the education, health and nutrition of school children. However, there is limited evidence in terms of the benefits of providing a reliable market for small-holder farmers through “home-grown” school feeding approaches. This study aims to evaluate the impact of school feeding programmes sourced from small-holder farmers on small-holder food security, as well as on school children’s education, health and nutrition in Mali. In addition, this study will examine the links between social accountability and programme performance.DesignThis is a field experiment planned around the scale-up of the national school feeding programme, involving 116 primary schools in 58 communities in food insecure areas of Mali. The randomly assigned interventions are: 1) a school feeding programme group, including schools and villages where the standard government programme is implemented; 2) a “home-grown” school feeding and social accountability group, including schools and villages where the programme is implemented in addition to training of community based organisations and local government; and 3) the control group, including schools and household from villages where the intervention will be delayed by at least two years, preferably without informing schools and households. Primary outcomes include small-holder farmer income, school participation and learning, and community involvement in the programme. Other outcomes include nutritional status and diet-diversity. The evaluation will follow a mixed method approach, including household, school and village level surveys as well as focus group discussions with small-holder farmers, school children, parents and community members. The impact evaluation will be incorporated within the national monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system strengthening activities that are currently underway in Mali. Baselines surveys are planned for 2012. A monthly process monitoring visits, spot checks and quarterly reporting will be undertaken as part of the regular programme monitoring activities. Evaluation surveys are planned for 2014.DiscussionNational governments in sub-Saharan Africa have demonstrated strong leadership in the response to the recent food and financial crises by scaling-up school feeding programmes. “Home-grown” school feeding programmes have the potential to link the increased demand for school feeding goods and services to community-based stakeholders, including small-holder farmers and women’s groups. Alongside assessing the more traditional benefits to school children, this evaluation will be the first to examine the impact of linking school food service provision to small-holder farmer income, as well as the link between community level engagement and programme performance.Trial registrationISRCTN76705891

This study examined factors influencing parents’ and caregivers’ engagement in School Feeding Programmes (SFPs). The study was conducted in Uduka Ward, in Nzega District, Tanzania. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design and collected data through interviews and documentary review methods. The study involved 227 respondents, 219 parents and caregivers, and 8 key informants who were systematically and purposively selected, respectively. Interviewers administered a questionnaire to collect primary data. The collected data were subjected to binary logistic regression and descriptive statistics analysis. The study observed that education level, income, number of income sources, attitude towards primary education, and awareness of SFPs significantly influenced the engagement of parents and caregivers in SFPs through contributions. The study concludes that several factors have a significant influence on parents’ and caregivers' engagement in SFPs. These factors include income, number of income sources, education level, attitude towards education and SFPs, all of which have a positive association with their engagement in SFP. The study recommends enhancing the efficacy of the programme and the engagement of parents and caregivers through workshops and information sharing sessions, the Ministry responsible for Education and Vocation Training can cultivate a better understanding on how SFPs positively affects pupils’ health and educational performance, thereby increasing participation and support for SFPs. To boost parents’ and caregivers’ engagement in school feeding initiatives, it is advisable to the responsible ministries to improve individuals’ education level, households’ income and launch targeted awareness raising and mindset change campaigns on provided education and the school feeding programmes.

In Indonesia, school feeding programs have not been established nationally due to the government’s limited budget. To examine the possibility of copayment for school feeding programs, parents’ intentions to use the school feeding programs and their willingness to pay (WTP) for these programs should be considered. We conducted an online questionnaire survey among the parents of junior high school students in all five public junior high schools in the Kepanjen District of Malang Regency, East Java Province, Indonesia. We used the contingent valuation method to elicit parents’ WTP for school feeding and calculated the price elasticity of school feeding. Factors associated with the WTP were examined using logistic regression analysis. Of the 940 participants, 90% intended to use school feeding programs, and 30% were willing to pay Rp 15,000 (USD 1.05) or higher per meal. Of the 944 students (participants’ children), all but two students consumed meals or snacks at school, with 74% consuming foods three or more times daily. Higher WTP for school feeding was associated with frequent food consumption at school, higher income, and a better perception of meals at school. In contrast, lower WTP was associated with more household members. Most parents intended to use school feeding programs with certain WTP irrespective of the price of school feeding. Therefore, school feeding in Indonesia might be expanded through copayment.

Malnutrition among children of school-going age is a challenge of serious concern in developing countries especially Sub-Saharan Africa. Many programs focus on mothers and under-5-year-old children, leaving the school going age unattended. It has been shown that school meals can reduce school absenteeism, improve concentration in class and reduce early dropouts. In Tanzania, successful home-grown school feeding programs are localized in few areas but have not been scaled-out. The objective of this study was to analyze the policy and organizational environment which enables or promotes home-grown school feeding approaches. The study consisted of a systematic review, key informant interviews and focus group discussions in Arumeru and Babati Districts, Tanzania. In total, 21 key informant interviews with 27 participants and 27 focus group discussions with 217 participants were conducted. The results show that Tanzania lacks a clear policy on school feeding; there are no guidelines for school meal quality, participation in school feeding programs is not mandatory, leading to many students being left out and going hungry. Students in private schools tend to be better off than those in public schools in terms of provision and quality of school meals. We recommend that policies and practices are developed based on positive experiences of home-grown school feeding programs implemented in Tanzania by the World Food Programme and Project Concern International and emphasize that these policies need to be developed in a multi-sectoral manner. A conceptual framework for improving home-grown school feeding in public schools in Tanzania highlights four critical components: leadership and public awareness; operational modalities; contributions from parents; and meal diversity and nutrition. The home-grown school feeding model provides mechanisms to improve diversity of meals and their nutritional value, increase participation of communities and inclusion of students. Parents will still be responsible for the largest part of food supplies, but the model also requires participation of multiple stakeholders, and provision of natural resources such as land and water by the local government for production of nutritious food for young students. Minimum levels of social protection are recommended to ensure that no student is denied school meals.