Locally source food to ensure a balanced diet

Our planet produces enough food to feed the entire global population yet one billion people are malnourished and a similar number overweight. The existing food systems have failed due to challenges like massive global disparities in wealth and the devastating effects of climate change.

Reducing these seismic imbalances requires radical ‘systems change’ interventions. With a growing movement and political consensus built around the need to reverse climate change, we can feel somewhat assured that governments are starting to address this problem.

The next big question is global poverty, and how we can eradicate hunger. This is not a new question; world leaders have grappled with it for many decades.

Governments and donors need to make some big bets and invest heavily in proven models that can be quickly expanded to tackle food insecurity and unaffordability.

Most of the world’s poorest people are farmers; so, it seems obvious that agriculture will be fundamental to this. However, one of the biggest challenges farmers face is accessing markets where they can sell their produce at a fair price.

Low prices

Kenya is a nation of farmers yet many are suffering from the low prices they receive. As we enter the planting season for this year’s long rains, farmers need to have confidence that their investments will pay off. We need joined-up government and thinking across sectors for solutions that improve educational outcomes and grow our economy.

School feeding programmes are among the most impactful investments for a government, especially as demographics in Africa show primary school-age children at 10-15 per cent of the population.

Consistently excluded

Africa has the largest population of children but they have been consistently excluded from the most effective social safety net: School feeding. A continent of farmers cannot feed its children.

Feeding children sustainably and at scale, in ways that maximise education, nutrition and socioeconomic outcomes, especially for girls. Ahead of the August elections, let political leaders think creatively about building market linkages so that more local produce is used to feed our children. We need to speed up post-Covid recovery by ‘building back better’ in vital sectors like education and agriculture.

Today is the African Day of School Feeding. The annual event led by the African Union to renew and grow commitments by countries to deliver home-grown school feeding programmes which advance human capital development. Most of the meals consumed by children in Kenya lack the nutrients required for their growth due to limited dietary diversity, low affordability and insufficient nutritional awareness among parents. Only 5.7 per cent of children consume a balanced diet daily due to a reduction in consumption of healthy foods.

School feeding programmes that source locally can fix this. We can no longer wait for donors from the Global North to solve our problems. The power to invest in our children by utilising local agricultural produce is in our hands. It is up to us to act.

Ms Njiru is the executive director of Food for Education. @wawiranjiru