By Julius Peter Ochen
The escalating public health challenge of malnutrition and wasting, which currently affects more than 25% of Ugandan children, has reignited the debate on school feeding programmes as a way of bridging the nutritional gap that many parents and guardians can no longer fill.
The situation is even more alarming in the Tooro and Karamoja sub-regions and, more broadly, in western Uganda, where the prevalence is reported to exceed 40%.
According to UNICEF and the World Health Organization's 2017 reports, malnutrition threatened to destroy a generation of Ugandan children. More than one-third of young children—about 2.4 million—were stunted physically and mentally. The damage caused by stunting is irreversible.
Nearly a decade later, that number is likely to have risen to more than three million children, some of whom are now voters and emerging leaders. They will determine Uganda's future leadership if they do not become leaders themselves. They will become our teachers, doctors, engineers, drivers, politicians and professionals in other fields. If nothing is done now, society will ultimately bear the cost of this neglect. Some will marry our daughters, bringing the consequences directly into our households. The school feeding programme, therefore, should aim to do more than simply address hunger if the country is to avert this looming national crisis.
While presenting the National Resistance Movement manifesto progress report at State House Nakasero on December 5, 2024, the Minister of Education and Sports, Janet Museveni, announced that the government was reviewing the education policy with the possibility of adopting a national school feeding programme to reduce the primary school dropout rate, which currently stands at about 40%.
However, the ongoing policy discussion appears to place greater emphasis on providing food to address hunger and starvation among pupils than on closing the nutritional gap. This contrasts sharply with global practice in many developing countries, where school feeding programmes are deliberately designed to provide balanced nutrition during children's formative years.
In 1979, Kenya launched a national school feeding programme that provided each child with a daily ration of 150 grams of cereals, 40 grams of pulses, 5 grams of oil and 2 grams of salt. The objective was to bridge nutritional deficiencies, particularly protein intake, which is critical for brain growth and development during the first 10 years of a child's life.
Over the years, Kenya reinforced the programme through complementary policies, including the National Food and Nutrition Security Policy (2011) and the National Nutrition Action Plan (2012–2017). Today, the country provides school meals to more than four million learners on an annual budget of about US$40 million, translating to roughly US$10 per child each year.
In Uganda, however, the Education Act, 2008 places the responsibility for feeding children at school on parents and guardians, many of whom are already unable to meet that obligation. Attempts to shift part of that responsibility to the government have yet to produce meaningful results.
Similarly, the World Food Programme's 2020 School Feeding Strategy, which proposed delivering an integrated package of health and nutrition services through multi-sectoral and multi-actor responses, has not received the government support required for implementation.
This followed several other initiatives—including the National Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children Policy, the School Health Policy and the draft School Feeding Policy Guidelines—which also failed to secure funding from the Consolidated Fund.
It is therefore unsurprising that a 2015 Save the Children report concluded that Ugandan doctors were no better than Kenyan nurses.
A country where a significant proportion of the population grows up with underdeveloped brains would face a national catastrophe unmatched by any war in human history. As the education policy review progresses, all stakeholders must ensure that the school feeding programme goes beyond serving boiled beans and posho.
It should provide balanced meals containing the nutrients necessary for healthy brain growth and development. Achieving this does not require an impossible investment.
The author is a public policy pundit with Kampala Analytica
