The government will from early next year commence a home-grown school feeding programme and phase out the current scheme being run in collaboration with donors and non-governmental organisations.

While schoolchildren are fed with food supplied by donors and NGOs, the homegrown system will see schools procure food produced locally.
The government has adopted a Brazilian model aimed at providing a market for locally produced food to spur economic growth.

According to Daniel Silva Balaban, a director at the Centre of Excellence Against Hunger in Brazil, the Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme provides an opportunity for farmers to benefit from a stable and predictable market.

“We started it in Brazil 10 years ago, and now all children in our country receive healthy food and they all go to school,” said Mr Balaban.

“What we need is to see how Rwanda can also benefit,” he added.

According to various reports, the system of feeding school children on food donated by NGOs and international community has limitation as beneficiaries’ choices are limited to what has been supplied.

The reports also states that locally produced food struggles to get a market as a result of relief food imported by international agencies.

According to Agriculture Minister Agnes Kalibata, over 47 million schoolchildren in Brazil have benefited from the programme shortly after its initiation.

“They use their own food and money to feed their children, that is what we want also to establish.”

Hunger has been cited as one of the factors behind high school dropout rates in the country as some children walk over 30 kilometres every day.

The World Food Programme together with the Ministry of Education started school feeding programme in schools located in areas that are prone to drought in 2001.

The areas targeted by the programme included Bugesera district and the former Kibuye province. Sandrine Uwamahoro, a 13-year-old girl at a primary school in Bugesera district told Rwanda Today that she walks a distance of 12 kilometres to and from school every day, which makes her doubt if she will complete her studies.

“Because we are given food here (at school) we can at least resist the hunger and fatigue and continue to study. When I started going to school in primary, I felt like nothing would discourage me to continue going there, but the distance made me got hungry and weak quickly, so I could not study very well and I always had a low note in every subject,” said Uwamahoro.

Today the WFP Rwanda provides a hot midday meal to 300,000 primary school children in 300 schools mainly in the most food insecure areas.

And it is also in the process of expanding to an additional 50,000 school children to accommodate the newly approved nine year basic education system.

The WFP set this school feeding program in order to increase the enrolment and retention of vulnerable children, to improve the school attendance by both boys and girls in schools and also to increase the ability to manage school feeding program by the government at the national, provincial and districts level.