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Digitising the school feeding programme
Ensuring nourishment, attendance, and educational success.
SCHOOL FEEDING PROGRAMME TO GO DIGITAL
The Ministry of Education, Arts & Culture (MoEAC) and the World Food Programme (WPF) Namibia have jointly launched the Namibia School Feeding Information System (NaSIS) in Windhoek. It is intended to enhance monitoring, evaluation and reporting of the Namibia School Feeding Programme implementation in government schools.
“The aim of the NSFP is to reduce absenteeism and increase attendance of learners in schools. The NSFP is very important, because for many of the learners it is the only meal they eat the whole day. Learners cannot concentrate on a hungry stomach. When this meal is not there, some learners do not attend school,” said the Governor of the Khomas Region, Laura McLeod-Katjirua.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
According to the UN World Food Programme Country Representative, Dr. George Fedha, the first installment for NaSIS has been completed and deployed on government infrastructure, now digitalising the tracking of food items disbursed and consumed in schools participating in NSFP. “The subsequent installment will focus on tracking school attendance, the introduction of meal vouchers, integrations with the Home-Grown School Feeding Programme and enhancing business intelligence,” Fedha said.
Fedha further noted that the WFP has provided multiyear technical assistance to the MoEAC to strengthen programme implementation, adding that the Namibian government and the WFP recognise the critical role which technology and innovation continue to play in enabling the delivery of social protection programmes, such as the NSFP. Deputy Minister of Education, Arts and Culture, Faustina Namutenya Caley, said the programme is a safety net to which the government has made a strong commitment in order to alleviate immediate hunger among schoolgoing children, thereby increasing their concentration and attention span, and contributing to improved school participation in terms of enrolment and attendance as well as learning achievement and cognitive development.
Caley has urged all schools benefiting from the programme to make use of the system by capturing all programme-related information regularly and accurately for better coordination of programme activities and efficiency in data management, once deployed in schools.
HOME-GROWN SFP PILOT
In 2021, the WFP Namibia partnered with the MoEAC and piloted the Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP) which complements the NSFP, rolled out across 29 schools in the Omaheke, Kunene, Ohangwena, Kavango East, Kavango West, Zambezi and Hardap regions, and has since invested N$2.7 million in this programme. “The WFP-supported HGSFP pilot provided safe, diversified and nutritious school meals to 11,687 school learners in all 29 primary schools. The programme also provided a market for local smallholder farmers and traders, creating a predictable income”, said WFP Namibia. The HGSFP creates a predictable income for the smallholder farmers and traders and boosts agricultural production thereby enhancing the local economy and reducing poverty. In 2022/2023, an amount of N$5 million was allocated by the Namibian government to expand the pilot to 29 more schools.
POLICY
The school feeding policy implementation action plan’s objectives are to enhance retention and learning outcomes through timely access to diverse nutritious food in schools; enhance nutrition and health of learners; support smallholder producers by linking them to the NSFP and to strengthen coordination and sectoral linkages in the management, implementation and monitoring of the programme.
