School-feeding to coverall schools—Ministry

Minister of Education Madalitso Kambauwa Wirima says government plans to roll out the Primary School-Feeding Programme to all schools by 2030 to improve positive education indicators.

She said this at Chithiba Primary School in Kasungu District on Tuesday when a delegation from Mary’s Meals International visited the school to appreciate the progress of the feeding programme.

Said Wirima: “School-feeding is one of the priority programmes for contributing to attainment of education outcomes as well as improving health and nutrition status of our learners.

“The ministry has placed the school meals programme as one of its priorities as reflected through the five strands for foundational learning, which commit to increase school-feeding coverage from 35 percent of all public primary schools to 100 percent by 2030.”

She said while Malawi continues to achieve good results in terms of learner enrolment, it still faces challenges in terms of other access indicators such as learner attendance and dropout.

Mary’s Meals International chief programmes officer Graeme Little said it was exciting that the initiative, which started with 200 pupils in Blantyre in 2002, has grown to feeding over a million pupils in Malawi.

He said: “The programme is strong and the community is supporting it. The sad reality is that there are many pupils who go to schools that do not have the feeding programme.

“The other challenge is the rising cost of food. However, we remain committed to raising the resources. Our priority is to keep the promise to the children.”

With support from Mary’s Meals International, the government is implementing the programme in 931 primary schools in 24 districts using a model that promotes procurement of locally produced maize and soya blend