Federal government in collaboration with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) have announced that they will improve on the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) even as school reopens.
This was disclosed in a joint statement issued by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs Disaster Management and Social Development and United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).
According to the statement, the decision was reached after a joint assessment conducted by both parties to identify ways of scaling-up and sustaining the NHGSFP last year.
The statement reads,
“Home Grown School Feeding initiatives promote nutrition education and better eating habits and encourage the diversification of production with a special emphasis on local crops.
“WFP is backing the next stage with a significant transfer of ICT equipment. This includes tablets with access to the PLUS Schools Menus – a free tool to help state Nutrition Officers design nutritious menus for schools.
“The hardware will not only support the Ministry’s efforts to digitalize its monitoring and evaluation system, but also enable the national roll out of the PLUS School Menu Tool developed by WFP to standardize cost-effective menu development.
“By 2021, this breakthrough initiative serves school meals to over 9 million students in 53,000 public primary schools, making it one of the largest school feeding programmes in Africa.
“It has also led to a significant increase in school enrollment across the country. Moreover, the programme has provided 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.
“Schools provide local farmers with a predictable outlet for their products, leading to a stable income, more investments and higher productivity. The children enjoy healthy, diversified food; this makes it more likely that they will stay in school, perform better, and improve their adult job prospects”.
Also, The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq in the statement said, “The NHGSFP remains an important intervention of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. Through it, hunger, malnutrition, poverty, education can all be addressed.
“We at the FMHADMSD are here to ensure that this programme is strengthened and sustained so that it can continue to support the needs of the children, families, women and communities it targets. The technical support from the World Food Programme is therefore timely, relevant and well appreciated”.
United Nations World Food Programme Country Director, Ronald Sibanda was also quoted to be saying that, “One of the best ways of fighting hunger and preventing malnutrition among children is to provide them with a healthy school meal. Nigeria is a good example of where the Government has taken the lead from day one and invested resources and funding into the design and implementation of its National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme. This is a great initiative and WFP is very pleased to provide technical support for the Government of Nigeria.”he added.
