Governments in Sub-Saharan Africa have provided school meals to roughly 20 million extra children over the past two years, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday, showing a move away from dependence on foreign aid and a stronger commitment to education.
The region saw the biggest rise in school feeding of any region, by nearly a third to 87 million in 2024. Ethiopia, Rwanda, Madagascar, and Chad all managed to feed six times as many over the period.
"Government investments in school meals... (signal) a significant shift from reliance on foreign aid to recognising school meals as a strategic public investment in children's education (and) health," the report said.
Farmers also benefit
The WFP report found that local farmers had also benefited from the school feeding. The government of Benin's buying local food for these programmes contributed over $23 million to the economy in 2024, it said.
More than a third of school meals in Sierra Leone came from food produced by smallholder farmers.
It warned, however, that millions of children, especially in some countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, and South Sudan, still lacked access to school meals, as donor support continued to fall.
