Malawi commits to promote home grown meals to learners in primary schools

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The Malawi Government through the Deputy Minister of Education Nancy Chaola Mdooko has committed to promoting provision of home grown school meals to all leaners in public primary schools as spearheaded by the African Union.

The country will join the Schools Meals Coalition which is a global movement to supporting school feeding programmes in various countries.

The Deputy Minister made the commitment in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Wednesday 1 March 2023, where she represented Malawi during the Africa School Feeding Commemoration Day.

Speaking at the meeting, Mdooko emphasized on the country’s commitment in continuing the school feeding program because of many advantages including contribution to improving girls’ education, health and wellbeing thereby mitigating gender disparities in access to education.

She added: “We are committed to providing schools with diversified nutritious meals based on local food habits and equipping communities with knowledge and skills in diversified food production, preparation, and consumption and increasing incomes for farm families through farmers association and stimulating local economic activities.”

Nancy Chaola Mdooko

The Deputy Minister, therefore, called for continued collaboration between Malawi Government and development partners and all school feeding stakeholders in the school feeding programming in order to further scale up financing towards implementation of sustainable home grown school feeding program and increase coverage of schools from the current 35%.

The Deputy Minister also called for continued collaboration in order for Malawi to take part in partnership forums so at to learn and share experiences on how to build more sustainable, low cost and highly scalable school feeding programs.

She also expressed Malawi’s commitment to join in advocacy with member states in finding innovative measures to address effects of climate change within the school programming.

This year’s celebration is the 8th since the inception of Africa school feeding day and the theme was “Boosting Local Food Procurement Systems and Regional Value Chains: The role of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA) for sustained Home Grown School Feeding Program and Improved Learning”

Several Countries attended the meeting including Ethiopia, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Lesotho, South Sudan, Burundi, Somalia, Sao Tome and Principe among others.

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