The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has concluded plan to collaborate with the federal government in form of technical support on the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme that was launched in 2016.

In a joint statement, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs Disaster Management and Social Development and the WFP stated that the partnership was an outcome of a joint assessment conducted in the first quarter of last year to identify ways of improving, scaling-up and sustaining the programme to provide a meal per day for nine million children in 53,000 public primary schools.

The WFP is backing the next stage with a significant transfer of ICT equipment including tablets with access to the Plus Schools Menus – a free tool to help state nutrition officers design nutritious menus for schools.

The WFP Country Director, Ronald Sibanda, said one of the best ways of fighting hunger and preventing malnutrition among children was to provide them with a healthy school meal.

She described Nigeria as a good example of where the government had taken the lead from day one by investing resources and funding into the design and implementation of its national home-grown school feeding programme, adding the WFP was very pleased to provide technical support for the federal government of Nigeria.

The hardware will not only support the ministry’s efforts to digitalise its monitoring and evaluation system, but also enable the national roll out of the PLUS School Menu Tool developed by WFP to standardise cost-effective menu development,

she said.

The Minister Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Farouq lauded the technical support from the WFP as timely, relevant and well appreciated.

She said the investment was fully funded by government because of its sheer potential as a development driver, adding the programme was strengthened and sustained so that it could continue to support the needs of the children, families, women and communities it targets.

The school feeding programme had led to a significant increase in school enrollment across the country as well as providing a much-needed boost to local economies by buying the products of smallholder farmers and providing jobs to more than 107,000 cooks from low-income families.

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.