School Food & Nutrition

Mainstreaming Nutrition to Promote Lifelong Healthy Eating Habits at the

School Level in Africa

• Priority of nutrition and improving diets by the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2)

• Rome Declaration on Nutrition and Framework for Action adopted by the Conference

• Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Zero Hunger Challenge (ZHC)

Improving Child Nutrition Remains a Priority

Importance of Schools

• Enormous potential to promote good nutrition, healthy diets

• Help address both the immediate and underlying causes of food and nutrition problems

• Provide the knowledge that the new generations will require in order to become active members of society,

• Children can also become powerful vessels to mainstream nutrition while promoting lifelong healthy eating habits

FAO School Food & Nutrition Core Components

• Food and Nutrition education;• School feeding/ School meals/Home Grown

School feeding;• Learning School Gardens;• Nutrition and health supporting environment

(hand washing, personal hygiene, food safety, physical activity, etc.);

• Institutional procurement from family farmers;

Key elements of FAO School Food & Nutrition

• Policy and regulatory frameworks

• Food and nutrition education and training

• Support to local production and linking local farmers to school feeding programmes

Malawi - National School, Health and Nutrition (SHN) Strategic Plan 2009-2018

• Signatories (MoEST, MoAFS, MoH) – Inter-sectorially • Improve definition of roles and responsibilities of the multiple

stake-holders• SHN Policy to be endorsed within the following month

(supposedly)• The role of the SHN TWGs as an implementation &

coordination mechanism; Capacity building of district-level lacking

• Strong emphasis on school meals but other elements unclear• Desire of a M&E system without clear awareness of what is it

that they want to monitor• Terminology issues - confusion between SHN & SF

Sao Tome and Principe - PNASESTP - School Feeding and Health Program • Law Nº 4/2012 National Law on School Feeding and Health• Constitution of a Universal National Program• Developed with the technical support of Brazil through bilateral

cooperation;• There is a law but…• No regulatory framework to clarify how to execute what the law

established• No strategic plan to support the implementation nor the existence of

PNASE• Current school meals modality mostly through imports, no mechanism in

place to create linkages with family farming• No legal framework to support farming cooperatives