SchoolFood4Cities: Nutrition for our urban future

 

Despite the importance of home-grown school feeding programs in sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 80 million primary school-age children experience hunger, with only a quarter accessing free or subsidized meals. The SchoolFood4Cities project explores the status and potential of home-grown school feeding programs in Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, focusing on their role in strengthening local food systems, promoting gender equality and fostering social inclusion.

The project aims to fill critical knowledge gaps by investigating the roles and challenges facing local government in promoting healthy and sustainable school meals, while piloting policy or practice experiments that aim to improve local governance of food systems. To meet the growing interest in this topic, the project will generate lessons for national and regional policy actors.

The participatory action research, which involves actor mapping, formation of multi-stakeholder coalitions, joint problem identification, and co-creation and piloting of solutions, will support enhanced cross-departmental and vertical collaboration within governments, deeper integration of evidence-informed approaches in the design and implementation of school feeding programs, increased familiarity with system-wide procurement programming, and more robust multi-stakeholder engagement around school and food-system initiatives.

This project is part of the School Food Catalyzing Climate Resilient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Procurement initiative (CRISP), led by IDRC. It seeks to catalyze the equitable and inclusive adoption and scaling of sustainable practices throughout the school meal procurement system, which could ultimately result in broader positive improvements in local or national food systems, including agroecological practices.