The Kenya Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the World Food Programme are celebrating Africa Day for School Feeding with a visit to Mcedo Beijing School in Mathare area, one of the schools under WFP school meals programme.
The African Union’s member states will mark March 1 as “Africa Day for School Feeding”.
This follows the decision by the African Union Summit to adopt home-grown school feeding programmes as a continental strategy to enhance retention and performance of children in schools and to boost income generation and entrepreneurship in local communities.
For the first time in history, an entire continent has come together to recognize the benefits of the world’s most widely used safety net, within and beyond the classroom.
In Kenya, there are approximately 10.5 million children of primary school age. The World Food Programme and the Government of Kenya are providing school meals to 1.5 million of the most vulnerable of these children.
These are children in some of the most food insecure places – arid, semi-arid and the informal settlements around Nairobi.
School meals provide a critical safety net, encouraging more regular attendance at school and contributing to children’s protection in emergencies.
They are also a key long-term investment in millions of people’s futures, local economies and in reducing hunger across the globe.
