Parent-led school feeding in East Africa
The global food crisis is leaving 733 million people—including 73 million children—hungry every day. For children, hunger not only threatens their health but also disrupts their education, a vital pathway out of poverty and malnutrition. School feeding programmes provide a proven solution, ensuring children receive nutritious meals that support their learning while encouraging families to keep them in school. Recognised by governments worldwide, these programmes are among the most cost-effective investments in education, health, and economic growth, delivering an estimated return of $3 to $9 for every pound spent.
Despite the benefits, only 18% of schoolchildren in low-income countries are enrolled in national school feeding programs. In East Africa, coverage varies significantly, with countries like Tanzania at 0% and South Sudan at 26%. Although many countries have established policies and guidelines for school feeding, they are often not fully implemented, leaving low-income parents struggling to feed their children without adequate support.
Key challenges include securing sufficient funding, ensuring reliable sourcing and supply chains, promoting sustainable food production, and adopting clean cooking technologies. Addressing these issues requires innovative funding mechanisms, improved supply chain transparency, and a focus on climate-smart agriculture and renewable energy solutions.
Scaling up school feeding: A parent-led approach
Expanding and strengthening national school feeding programmes is essential, but so is supporting the initiatives that parents and communities are already leading to improve children's nutrition at school.
While not all parents in low-income countries can afford to invest more in their child’s nutrition, many can. Governments and donors have an opportunity to strategically leverage these contributions while ensuring support for those who cannot. This approach not only enhances diet diversity but also creates market opportunities for local farmers.
Since 2015, SNV has implemented scalable parent-led school dairy programmes in Uganda and Ethiopia, increasing access to boiled milk, traditional yoghurt, and probiotic yoghurt. Building on this experience—alongside our expertise in dairy, horticulture, cereals, and pulses—we are expanding our approach to strengthen school feeding systems that improve nutrition, empower communities, and drive local economic growth.
Our impact: Sustainable school feeding that transforms lives
In partnership with Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports, SNV introduced a parent-paid school milk programme in Southwestern Uganda and the Kampala metropolitan area. Parents cover the cost of the milk their children consume, ensuring a sustainable funding model. Schools receive grants to improve kitchens and water purification systems. By 2023, the programme had reached nearly 1 million children, with schools consuming an average of 125,000 litres of milk daily—creating a stable market for local farmers.
In Ethiopia, SNV piloted a subsidised school milk programme using probiotic yoghurt to address quality and affordability challenges. As trust in the programme grew, parents gradually took over the costs. By July 2023, 25,000 students were enrolled—half consuming yoghurt, the other half boiled milk—with noticeable improvements in children’s health, nutrition, and academic performance.
SNV works in alignment with national school feeding policies across Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania, and Rwanda. We support parent- and community-led initiatives, ensuring flexibility to subsidise vulnerable families.
Our approach includes establishing school feeding committees, developing procurement systems, training farmers, and promoting safe, energy-efficient meal preparation. Long-term sustainability is secured through early engagement with school leadership, teacher associations, community leaders, and parents, alongside strategies to mitigate the impact of economic shocks that can lead to school feeding dropouts.
Our school feeding programmes use locally grown and procured commodities to prepare diverse and nutritious school meals: homegrown and climate-resilient.
Our vision: Expanding sustainable school feeding
We strive to create a school environment conducive for school children to learn, supported by the availability of diverse nutritious meals. Beyond improving children’s health and learning outcomes, our focus on school feeding also strengthens local food systems, creating new markets for smallholder farmers.
Our vision is to extend parent-led school feeding programmes across East Africa, reaching 10 million schoolchildren by 2030. This will improve educational opportunities, reduce short-term hunger, and build more resilient food systems.
SNV is catalysing a regional movement—bringing together key actors to connect, share knowledge, and strengthen national school feeding efforts. We see tremendous value in supporting a regional layer that builds on existing programmes and amplifies their impact.
To advance this vision, SNV will host a Regional Visioning Workshop on School Feeding in May 2025 in Uganda. Bringing together 35 to 50 key stakeholders—including government representatives, regional institutions, private sector partners, implementing organisations, and funders—the workshop will focus on one central question: how can we achieve greater impact through collective action? United by a shared commitment to ensuring every child has access to nutritious meals at school, we will explore pathways to a stronger, more sustainable future for school feeding across the region.
Developing a regional vision
To truly scale the impact of school feeding across East Africa, we need strong regional alignment around several key themes. While each country has its unique context, many of the core challenges and opportunities are shared—and tackling them collectively can unlock greater efficiency, innovation, and reach.
Key issues to address in a regional context:
Funding:
While national governments currently shoulder the largest share of school feeding costs globally, achieving universal coverage will require even greater investment. Stakeholders are exploring diverse financing models—including climate and carbon finance, debt swaps, corporate social responsibility, philanthropy, and increased community ownership through parent, community, and mayor-led contributions. Though school feeding is costly, it delivers an impressive return on investment—$9 for every $1 spent—with cross-cutting benefits in agriculture, education, nutrition, and social protection.Sourcing and supply:
Homegrown school feeding has long been a priority, but many systems still face issues with food quality, quantity, and supply chain reliability. Ensuring transparency and accountability in procurement remains a challenge. Countries use varying approaches, ranging from centralised to decentralised systems, to deliver both perishable and non-perishable foods to schools.
Production:
School feeding programmes offer a powerful platform for promoting sustainable and regenerative food systems. Governments can leverage institutional procurement to scale up climate-resilient agriculture, revive traditional, nutritious crops, and support smallholder farmers through better aggregation and market access. This transition is vital for achieving both nutrition and environmental goals.Clean cooking and renewable energy:
Traditional cooking methods contribute to deforestation, environmental degradation, and serious health issues, especially for cooks and children exposed to firewood smoke. Investing in clean cooking technologies and renewable energy for institutional kitchens can drastically improve health outcomes, reduce environmental impact, and strengthen food system resilience. Sustainable biomass management also links directly to climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.