King Letsie III of Lesotho has commended the government of Kenya under President William Ruto for its commitment in the school meals program.
Speaking in Nairobi after a benchmarking tour in Ruiru, Kiambu County, the King and his entourage accompanied by the President of the African Development Bank, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina and the Ministry of Education officials were marvelled at accomplishments in the school feeding program in the country.
“African governments can integrate school feeding into their national fabric to nurture minds for a better future of our continent,” said the King adding that African leaders should take the lead in championing school feeding and ending school-age hunger.
King Letsie III took cognizant of model young philanthropists like Kenyan Wawira Njiru, the founder of Food for Education, who was recognized as the United Nations Person of the Year in October 2021 for taking lead in start-ups in nutrition for others to replicate scaling up impactful school feeding programs.
The President of the African Development Bank, Dr. Adesina decried unhealthy stunted growth of most African children occasioned by malnutrition saying, it was a leadership issue and governments should invest in education to realize a sustainable future for the African continent and beyond.
Dr. Adesina called for mainstreaming and advocacy for all children to eat well since an empty stomach can interfere with the cognitive ability of the brain to grasp educational content, among other concepts.
Being at the centre of our sustainable economic growth, the ADB President was conferred the Chief of the Order of the Golden Heart (C.G.H), Kenya’s highest national distinction and honour by President Dr. William Ruto recently for the Bank’s role in Kenya’s sustainable economic growth.
Children and adolescents spend most of their time, (about 75 percent), in a school environment throughout the year. That is where they consume more than half of their daily meals, grow up, and mature to become adults.
During the Second Global Ministerial Meeting held in Nairobi in October 2024, President Dr. William Ruto committed to working with President Macron of France and President Lula of Brazil, among others, to champion school meals on the global stage, particularly in the context of the G20-led Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty under Brazil’s leadership.
The National School Meals Coalition launched in October last year is now operational. The Coalition has gone ahead and formed its own technical working groups or initiatives aligning to the Global School Meals Initiative.
The government recognized this fact and introduced the School Meals Programme to provide complementary midday meals to school children with the aim to increase school enrolment and improve retention and performance.
This was aimed at making it more sustainable and nationally owned Home-Grown School Meals Programme by locally sourcing nutritious and culturally acceptable foods for supply to schools. Consequently, the numbers for school enrolment, retention, completion, learning outcomes, nutrition and general wellbeing have jumped from 240,000 to 2.6 million learners over the years.
The programme currently covers learners in all 11 arid counties, selected schools in the 15 semi-arid counties, urban informal settlements, special needs Schools and the camp-based refugee schools.
The School Meals Programmes are an indispensable safety net for nourishing school-going children, creating jobs, fostering green economic growth, and long-term development of the local communities.
The government is committed and charting the path towards universal coverage by scaling up provision of healthy, nutritious and climate-friendly meals from the current reach of 2.6 million to 10 million children by 2030.
Towards this commitment, an operational plan for the scale-up has been developed with technical assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation to effectively implement its scale-up plan.
The government is transitioning to a Home-Grown School Meals Program leveraging an aggregator model, currently piloted in two counties, prioritizing food sourced by local smallholder farmers.
By Joseph Kamolo Mutua
