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From Evidence to Action: Good Practices Strengthening Home‑Grown School Feeding Across Africa
Every year on March 1st, Africa reaffirms a simple but powerful conviction: no child should have to learn on an empty stomach. The African Day of School Feeding (ADSF) serves as a continent‑wide reminder that a school meal is far more than food: it is a driver of learning, equity, resilience, and community development. Beyond the celebration, this annual moment offers a unique opportunity to reflect on what is working and why. This year, the 11th ADSF shines a light on the evidence: concrete innovations, home‑grown solutions, and field‑tested practices that are strengthening school feeding systems and improving children’s lives across the continent. Understanding these successes helps chart the path forward.
A School Meal: A Quiet Policy Transforming Millions of Lives
Across Africa, a single school meal can set powerful changes in motion: better attendance, improved concentration, protection for adolescent girls, reduced household financial stress, and new market opportunities for local farmers. These impacts explain why governments are scaling up their commitments, increasingly recognizing school feeding as one of the continent’s most effective public policies. Between 2022 and 2024, the number of children receiving daily school meals increased from 66 million to 87 million, marking the largest regional growth in the world. This means 20 million additional children now benefit from government‑led school feeding programmes.
Behind these figures are children like Kouamé Joël, a student at Dembasso public primary school in northern Côte d'Ivoire, who expressed this impact in his own words in 2024: “Thanks to the meals I receive at school, I have the energy to learn. One day, I dream of becoming a great football player.”
His story illustrates a simple truth: investing in school meals also means supporting the dreams of future African champions.
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH): The Essential Link
However, a nutritious meal alone cannot keep a child healthy if the school lacks clean water or basic hygiene facilities. In 2026, as nutritional, economic, and climate‑related pressures intensify, the ADSF theme: “Ensuring Access to Nutritious Meals, Safe Water and Hygiene: Promoting Safety and Resilience in Every School Feeding Investment”, emphasizes the need to more closely integrate safe water, hygiene, and school feeding and calls for stronger, coordinated action across sectors. Integrating safe drinking water, handwashing stations, and hygienic school environments is now recognized as a core component of effective school feeding. Combining nutrition, water and hygiene reduces disease, improves attendance, supports concentration, and protects the gains made through school feeding policies. Today, WASH is no longer an optional complement: it is a fundamental requirement for the well‑functioning of school feeding systems.
Home‑Grown School Feeding: When School Meals Stimulate Local Economies
While nutrition and WASH support children’s well-being, Home‑Grown School Feeding (HGSF) goes further by simultaneously strengthening communities and local economies. By sourcing food directly from local farmers, this model creates immediate and sustainable economic opportunities: market stability for smallholder farmers, strengthened local agricultural value chains, women’s economic empowerment - who are highly represented in production, processing and catering- community resilience and diversified household diets. To illustrate this dynamic, a closer look at documented impacts across African countries provides powerful insights.
Documented Impacts Across African Countries
Across several countries, the impacts are already visible:
Benin: in 2023, Benin adopted a dedicated School Feeding Law to reinforce programme sustainability and formalize inter‑ministerial coordination. By 2024, the government‑funded school meal procurement had injected more than USD 23 million into the national economy, with direct purchases from smallholder farmers increasing by 800%, benefiting more than 23,000 people.
Burkina Faso: The Presidential Initiative “Assurer à chaque enfant un repas équilibré par jour” targets 9 million children aged 3–18 and allocates approximately 19 billion FCFA (≈ USD 31 million) annually for school meal procurement. Schools report enrolment increases from 30% to 60%, and CEPE exam success rates rising from 29% to 65% in 2022.
Burundi: in 2024, local food procurement for school meals increased farmers’ incomes by 50% and generated employment across 67 cooperatives representing 20,000 members.
Côte d’Ivoire: Through its Directorate of School Feeding, Côte d’Ivoire operates a centralized procurement model in which suppliers deliver food to a central hub in Abidjan before dispatch to regional warehouses. This approach ensures economies of scale and consistent quality control, while the government advances a new school feeding law (announced in 2022) to expand access and increase local food production by 2025. The impact of these investments is already visible at community level.
In 2023, Soro Siata, Secretary of the KATANA cooperative in Kantara (northern Côte d’Ivoire), reports: “Thanks to the techniques learned with WFP, CERFAM and partners, we harvested 51.07 tons on 20.42 hectares, compared to 32.49 tons in 2022. Some of the food feeds our children, some goes to the school canteen, and the rest we sell to increase our income and diversify our children’s diets.”
Ghana: A decentralized HGSF model, managed by District Assemblies and implemented by local caterers, generated a 33% increase in agricultural sales and strong rises in household income. Over 3.8 million pupils benefited from improved monitoring after digitization of the School Feeding Data & Monitoring System.
Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda: A public–private partnership enabled the creation of 1,300 school gardens, trained 61,500 farmers in climate‑smart agriculture, and provided energy‑efficient cooking systems.
Madagascar: In several southern regions, community committees (FEFFIs) manage school canteens, enforce minimum nutrition standards, and operate school gardens that provide vegetables for daily meals. The government and WFP also introduced fortified rice and micronutrient powders, improving diet quality while lowering per‑child costs and increasing enrolment and retention.
Zambia: Between 2019 and 2024, Zambia more than doubled its HGSF budget (from USD 7.1 million to USD 17.8 million), ensuring predictable funding despite shocks such as 2024 drought. At Maimwene Primary School, a 1.5‑hectare garden using drip irrigation and year‑round production now supplies vegetables for meals and generates income, making the school nearly self‑sufficient despite severe transport constraints.
CERFAM’s Role: Accelerating African Solutions
To sustain and scale these achievements, countries need strong systems, shared evidence, and peer‑to‑peer learning. As a Centre of Excellence serving the continent and dedicated to identifying, documenting and promoting good practices, CERFAM plays a pivotal role in helping governments institutionalize sustainable, evidence‑based school feeding programmes. By strengthening the generation and sharing of knowledge, it ensures that successful models can be replicated and scaled across countries, while fostering South–South cooperation and enabling peer learning. Its work includes supporting policy and legal framework development, reinforcing national and decentralized capacities in sustainable procurement, local value chain integration, and nutrition‑sensitive approaches, contributing to stronger, more resilient Home‑Grown School Feeding systems.
2026: A Year of Expansion and Collective Mobilization
As Africa’s population grows and food systems face increasing strain, school feeding must be recognized as a core development priority, not a secondary social programme, and anchored in legislation, sustainably financed, and fully integrated into national development plans. This year’s ADSF calls for all actors to scale up their commitments:
- Governments are urged to integrate school feeding, nutrition and WASH into education, health, agriculture and social protection policies.
- Technical and financial partners are encouraged to support innovation, sustainability and national leadership in school feeding.
- The private sector is called upon to invest in food technologies, smart agriculture, clean energy and water solutions.
- Finally, civil society organizations and communities are invited to boost community governance, accountability, and inclusive monitoring of school feeding systems.
Conclusion: Nourish Today, Build Tomorrow
ADSF 2026 conveys a powerful truth: one meal can change a child’s life, and millions of meals can change a continent. More than a celebration, this annual moment is a call to intensify political, financial, and community commitment to ensure that every African child receives a daily, healthy, and locally sourced meal. Investing in school feeding means investing in education, health, social cohesion, rural development, and Africa’s long‑term prosperity.
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References:
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State of School Feeding Worldwide, WFP, 10 September 2025, https://www.wfp.org/news/wfp-report-20-million-more-children-sub-saharan-africa-now-receive-government-led-school-meals
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Ibid.
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African Union. “11th African Day of School Feeding (ADSF): Ensuring Access to Nutritious Meals, Clean Water and Hygiene: Promoting Safety and Resilience in Every School Meal Investment.” African Union, February 2026. https://au.int/en/newsevents/20260228/11th-african-day-school-feeding-adsf
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UNICEF. “Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in Schools.” UNICEF, 2024.
https://www.unicef.cn/media/10381/file/WATER,%20SANITATION%20AND%20HYGIENE%20IN%20SCHOOLS.pdf
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World Food Programme. Home-Grown School Feeding in West Africa: A Landscape Analysis. Dakar, 2024. https://wfp.sharepoint.com/:b:/s/CERFAM644/IQDSBmhnwrb9Rr3TFqF8YpikAd2iLoROgqOO0njc_2-bcX4?e=YRSRrx
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Andreozzi, Diletta, Vaughn Gardner, Athenais Hagry, Melale Hailu, and Laila Shushtarian. Strengthening Home‑Grown School Feeding in Sub‑Saharan Africa: A Landscape Analysis. World Food Programme, May 2025. https://wfp-my.sharepoint.com/personal/marina_mea_wfp_org/Documents/Microsoft%20Copilot%20Chat%20Files/2024-25_Strengthening%20HGSF%20in%20SSA.pdf
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Ibid
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APA News – African Press Agency, 10 September 2025, https://apanews.net/africa-feeds-20m-more-schoolchildren-than-in-2022-un/
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World Food Programme. Home-Grown School Feeding in West Africa: A Landscape Analysis. Dakar, 2024. https://wfp.sharepoint.com/:b:/s/CERFAM644/IQDSBmhnwrb9Rr3TFqF8YpikAd2iLoROgqOO0njc_2-bcX4?e=YRSRrx
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CERFAM. “CERFAM and WFP in Côte d’Ivoire lead a mission to assess post-production and harvesting activities for rice in Korhogo and Boundiali in Côte d’Ivoire.” Medium, December 8, 2023.
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Andreozzi, Diletta, Vaughn Gardner, Athenais Hagry, Melale Hailu, and Laila Shushtarian. Strengthening Home‑Grown School Feeding in Sub‑Saharan Africa: A Landscape Analysis. World Food Programme, May 2025. https://wfp-my.sharepoint.com/personal/marina_mea_wfp_org/Documents/Microsoft%20Copilot%20Chat%20Files/2024-25_Strengthening%20HGSF%20in%20SSA.pdf
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Historic Danish Public‑Private Partnership with WFP, 8 April 2025, https://www.wfp.org/news/historic-danish-public-private-partnership-wfp-expands-home-grown-school-meals-east-africa
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Andreozzi, Diletta, Vaughn Gardner, Athenais Hagry, Melale Hailu, and Laila Shushtarian. Strengthening Home‑Grown School Feeding in Sub‑Saharan Africa: A Landscape Analysis. World Food Programme, May 2025. https://wfp-my.sharepoint.com/personal/marina_mea_wfp_org/Documents/Microsoft%20Copilot%20Chat%20Files/2024-25_Strengthening%20HGSF%20in%20SSA.pdf
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State of School Feeding Worldwide, WFP, 10 September 2025, https://www.wfp.org/news/wfp-report-20-million-more-children-sub-saharan-africa-now-receive-government-led-school-meals.
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Ibid.