School Feeding Programmes: A Low-Hanging Fruit in the Fight Against Hunger.
School feeding programs, initiatives that provide nutritious meals to children during the school day, have become a crucial tool in combating hunger reaching around 30% of children in Africa. In a recent UN report, it was noted that 20 million children are being fed by school feeding initiatives in 2023 and 2024. Beyond improving nutrition, school feeding has boosted enrollment and supported local livelihoods by sourcing food from nearby farmers. To understand their growing impact, it’s essential to examine the current landscape, key actors, and how this momentum can be scaled into a sustainable, hunger-fighting force through looking at successful initiatives.
Current Landscape in East Africa
The impact and reach of the school feeding programs cannot be overstated with governments having formed partnerships with multilateral institutions, private sector to keep the engine running. The UN World Food Programme provides financial support to Kenya, Ethiopia and Rwanda for their national school feeding programs. In Kenya, the national school feeding program, Kenya Primary Education Equity in Learning Program(KPEEL) serves 2,653,775 school going children regularly. In Ethiopia, about 25% of children are fed regularly by the school feeding programs. Rwanda’s food program feeds approximately 3.8 million children regularly.
Alongside government-led schemes are influential non-profits such as Kenya’s Food4Education founded by Wanjiru Njiru and Mary’s Meals across East and Southern Africa founded by two Scottish brothers, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow and Fergus MacFarlane-Barrow. Though smaller in scale compared to national programs, they play a critical role. Food4Education, for instance, now serves 650,000 affordable meals daily through its partnership with the Kenyan government demonstrating how complementary private sector efforts can extend reach and impact.
These initiatives incentivise children to go to school hence increasing school enrollment rates. The schools served by Food4Education in Nairobi and Kiambu had their enrollment rates increase by 22.3% and 36.5% respectively. With such tangible gains in both nutrition and education outcomes, the real challenge lies in charting a path to scale these programs sustainably and equitably.
Scalability
As much as national school feeding programs reach millions of students, their long-term stability remains fragile due to significant reliance on donor funding in the face of global aid shifts. Recent aid cuts across the region have shown how quickly progress can stall when external financing falters. In 2025 alone, WFP faced a 40 percent reduction in their funding which will consequently affect the amount of food they can provide to those in need. This vulnerability is particularly concerning given that the UN World Food Programme provides core financial support for many government-run initiatives. These programs tend to be the largest in the country, as discussed above, and serve the greatest number of students. Hence, there is a need for more sustainable locally-funded programs.
A promising blueprint for sustainable school meal delivery is the public-private partnership between Food4Education and county governments in Kenya. This model demonstrates how governments can work with mission-driven non-profits to stabilize funding, expand reach, and maintain affordability. The financial model used by Food4Education for example combines both subsidies from the government and parental contribution. Parents contribute Ksh10 which is roughly equivalent to 8 cents USD making the cost affordable for many parents while still ensuring long-term financial sustainability. This cost-sharing helps distribute the burden between the government and parents while ensuring access.
Moreover, the organization uses time and cost-efficient processes. The food is prepared in kitchens that are centrally located and then disbursed to different schools at lunch hour. This reduces the cost of production due to economies of scale. The kitchens also use clean energy in the form of eco-briquettes as opposed to firewood and charcoal. The Giga 40 kitchen is the largest green kitchen in Africa serving 60,000 meals.
A key part of scalability is integrating the local farmers and small to medium enterprises into the school feeding economy. With many countries in the region implementing the Home Grown School Feeding HGSF, model to varying extents. The model primarily sources nutritious foods from the local farmers and small businesses. Rwanda has been particularly successful in this area reporting around 97% of the foods they use come from local farmers. The Rwanda government provides tax incentives for crops like cereals.
Kenya, on the other hand, reports only having 43% of the food used comes from local sources. Several factors drive this gap: drought conditions lowering farmers yield, inefficient supply chains and many farmers lack reliable links to buyers. There are instances where farmers have produced but the weak logistics and coordination prevent it from reaching school kitchens. There is an opportunity to engage private, ethical actors across different stages of the supply chain to serve as intermediaries and close this gap. From buyers who aggregate produce at the farm level, to transporters, to market sellers. By creating more reliable linkages between farmers and markets, these intermediaries can reduce post-harvest losses and prevent produce from rotting on farms. This approach would not only improve farmers’ incomes and livelihoods but also strengthen the long-term sustainability of these initiatives. Research conducted by Catalyzing Change for Healthy Equitable and Sustainable Food Systems, CCHeFS, projects that incorporating SMEs and small holder farmers to these initiatives would increase farmers' livelihoods by 30-50%.
Challenges
Given the central role that governments hold and the advantage they have to propel such big initiatives, political stability is important. Countries in the region facing harsh political realities tend to register less progress. Children in DRC Somalia and South Sudan still lack access to food due to decreased donor support for school feeding initiatives. The effect is made worse by the global aid reductions.
Besides climate change and drought conditions reducing the food produce available, the seasonal nature of farming in the region also determines the kind of food served to the students. Produce in season tends to be cheaper than those out of season. Thus, there may be times where a trade-off needs to be made between nutritious meals and costs. The providers for these meals have to carefully adjust their procurement and services to reflect this reality.
Other challenges facing the integration of SMEs and local farmers are delayed payments. This could be caused by delay in disbursement of funds from national treasuries to the local governments or ministries responsible for doing the actual payments. Bureaucratic procurement punctuated by multiple approvals make the process rather lengthy. This makes it harder for farmers to do business with governments.
Looking Forward
As alluded to above, there is still a significant number of children who are facing starvation but are not captured within the 30% that benefit from the school meals. The more vulnerable children tend to be out of school due to challenges such as living in conflict areas, living in remote areas without schools, displacement etc. Majority of these children often need the help the most. A last mile solution that includes them would help solve the problem. Expanding the initiatives to include children who are in informal schools and low-cost private schools would also help catch the most vulnerable population. Quite a number of children living in informal settlements attend informal schools that are typically not included in the government run initiatives which mostly support publicly funded schools.
To mitigate the effects of climate change on food availability caused by drought conditions, farmers need to be encouraged to grow more drought-resistant crops. These locally available crops would then be included in the school menus to provide the nutrient dense meals. Moreover, investing in storage facilities such as silos and cold storages to ensure supply in the drier seasons.
Conclusion
School feeding programs are a low-hanging fruit for the fight against hunger with multifaceted benefits. They help Africa build resilience, nourish and educate the next generation and improve farmer livelihoods and the agricultural markets. Scaling innovative public-private partnerships and empowering local food systems, school feeding initiatives can evolve from band-aid solutions into durable engines of national resilience and economic growth.
