The actors involved in school feeding in Mozambique met in Maputo to provide inputs to the Ministry of Education and Human Development (MINEDH) for the development of the country’s School Feeding Strategy, which includes the National School Feeding Programme (PRONAE). The document, included in the Strategic Education Plan as an important part to improve school access and retention, and equitable participation of school children, proposes short and medium-term actions and priorities for the sustainable expansion of PRONAE.  

As part of the process of strengthening the intersectoral character of PRONAE, representatives of more than ten ministries and development partners involved in school feeding participated in the seminar, such as Adra, Counterpart International, ForAfrica and World Vision. Brazil and Cabo Verde were also invited and remotely shared their experiences with national school feeding programmes. The meeting took place between 6 and 8 July in Maputo. The Centre of Excellence against Hunger in Brazil has been working with WFP Mozambique and MINEDH in the document text and facilitating Brazil’s contributions in this process. 

The Strategy is an important and ambitious step in the consolidation of the process of expansion and strengthening of PRONAE for the coming years, reinforcing the role of the programme in strengthening family agriculture, preparing for emergencies and monitoring and evaluating its actions. The document will be presented at provincial level and to civil society in consultations to be held in the coming months, in preparation for submission to the MINEDH Councils and the Council of Ministers. WFP, MINEDH’s partner in the implementation of PRONAE, will continue to act to facilitate the actions proposed in the document after its approval.  

The Centre of Excellence’s support to Mozambique 

In the 10 years of operation of the WFP Center of Excellence against Hunger in Brazil, the work with Mozambique was present at several occasions, continuing the work that WFP has been doing in the country since 1977. In 2011, under the trilateral agreement with Brazil, a consultant travelled to the country. As a result of this contribution, the pilot school feeding project was launched. Learn more about the collaboration between the Centre of Excellence and Mozambique here. 

The WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil welcomed the government of Ethiopia to the first session of the “Virtual Study Visit: Brazil”, which took place on Wednesday, May 4. A total of 73 participants from WFP Ethiopia, the Ethiopian government at the national and regional levels, as well as partners from Save the Children joined online. The government of Ethiopia is currently committed to transforming the country’s agriculture sector, namely its approaches to school feeding, through adequate policies and programmes. With a view to eliminate hunger and malnutrition, it expects to accelerate commercialization, establish stable networks for farmers and strengthen cooperatives.  

Sharon Freitas, Head of Programme at the WFP Centre of Excellence, highlighted the importance of the Virtual Visit as a means to strengthen national capacities and promote knowledge sharing on school feeding and social protection via South-South Cooperation. The set of tools revolving around the Virtual Visit can facilitate dialogue, lower costs, and reinforce the relevance of truly homegrown school feeding programmes, as happens with the Brazilian case. “Besides attending the ultimate need of providing safe and nutritious meals for children, the model guarantees reliable markets for smallholder farmers, generating income and stimulating the local economy, ensuring more diverse and fresher products”, she said. 

Ambassador Ruy Carlos Pereira, from the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), and Karine Santos, from the National Fund for Education Development (FNDE), welcomed the participants via video messages and stressed the significance of sharing knowledge with and developing capacities of partner countries, integrating public policies, and ensuring the benefits of school feeding.  

School Feeding in Ethiopia 

While most of the population directly relies on agriculture as a means of living, the persistence of food and nutrition insecurity remains a key challenge, affecting school attendance, children performance and their health, with girls assuming most of the burden.  

With nearly 30 years of existence, the Ethiopian school feeding programme is increasing its scope and strategic focus, building on a pilot project that links school feeding with local agricultural production. More and more, various bodies of the federal and regional bureaucracies, city administrations, and communities are recognizing the importance of establishing a universal and sustainable school feeding programme.  

As stated by the Ethiopian State Minister of Agriculture, Melese Mekonnen, in his opening remarks, the Virtual Visit will allow the country to strengthen ties with the Brazilian government and learn from its experiences and success stories to develop tailored interventions that can serve as a basis for a cost-effective national initiative. 

Virtual Study Visit: Brazil 

The first session of the Virtual Visit started with an overview of the state of school feeding in Ethiopia, led by Mekuanent Dagnew, from the Ministry of Education. He detailed how the Ethiopian school feeding programme was established in 1994, with the collaboration of the WFP, and covered 40 primary schools, being then scaled up to different parts of the country. More recently, different ministries and development partners, among them the WFP, were involved in the creation of a policy framework and a strategy aiming towards the effective implementation of a school feeding programme in the country. 

The national school feeding policy framework, which set a vision of providing at least one meal a day to all pre-primary school children by 2030, is based on four pillars: at least one safe and nutritious in-school meal mainly from local purchases; strong institutional arrangements; sustainable and stable financial sources; and robust coordination mechanisms.  

Alemtsehay Sergawi, from the Ministry of Agriculture, presented the success factors and challenges for a nutrition-sensitive agriculture in Ethiopia. She mentioned that apart from recent efforts, the country still deals with high levels of stunting, chronic insecurity, and malnutrition, which influence child mortality, school enrolment and poor performance in primary school. “Elimination of stunting is a necessary step for growth and transformation in Ethiopia”, she added, emphasizing the importance of linking school feeding with local food purchases, agroecological production and culture-based food recipes. 

Amongst the main challenges, Alemtsehay Sergawi mentioned: weak institutional setup; poor infrastructure on post-harvest handling and insufficient value addition throughout the production chain from local production to schools; inadequate data management, nutrition finance, and technology adoption; as well as weak sectoral coordination, especially at the regional level.  

Valmo Xavier, from FNDE, presented the main features of PNAE, its decentralized model involving federal government, states, and municipalities, and explained how the programme was adapted with school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. He highlighted the role of the Ministry of Agriculture in providing training to smallholder farmers involved with school feeding.   

All those taking part in the Virtual Visit received a package of documents on Brazil’s school feeding experience – books, policy-briefs, and technical manuals – together with detailed videos on all aspects of PNAE.  

This first online meeting was facilitated by the WFP Centre of Excellence Brazil. A second encounter will take place on May 12, when participants will be able to pose questions, share experiences, and discuss with the Brazilian counterparts. The Virtual Visit will be followed by a face-to-face meeting in Brasília.   

Learn more about the “Virtual Study Visit: Brazil” and request a virtual visit here.  

In collaboration with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the WFP country office in Sierra Leone and the National School Feeding Secretariat are piloting home-grown school feeding in 17 schools in two districts, providing the schools with cash to purchase fresh vegetables from local farmers. The WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil is supporting the Sierra Leone country office in this process, through technical assistance and the facilitation of south-south exchanges on issues ranging from logistics to purchases from smallholder farmers. 

As part of this support, Yasmin Wakimoto, from the Programme team at the Centre of Excellence Brazil, and Jenneh James, from the School Feeding unit at WFP Sierra Leone, visited two schools in Kambia, one of the two districts where the home-grown pilot is being implemented. They also visited the In-land Valley Swamps (IVSs) receiving WFP technical support to produce the vegetables being sold for the school meals programme. “The level of organization that we saw in the schools we visited was amazing. Within just around three months of implementation, the school community has taken advantage of every single opportunity that was provided to them in this initial phase of the pilot”, said Yasmin Wakimoto. 

School cooks have been applying techniques acquired in the training provided by WFP to create healthier recipes, while smallholders leveraged on technical support, inputs and a new market opportunity to increase their income. “School directors and head teachers are also really invested in overseeing this whole implementation and guaranteeing that the programme runs well. It was great to see how the investment in one programme mobilized so many actors within a community,” said Yasmin Wakimoto. 

Head teachers that are involved in the home-grown pilot – reaching 5,072 primary school students – reported that the daily deliveries of fresh vegetables are already showing positive results: farmers are able to provide the vegetables needed for the meals, they are happy with this new and regular source of income and all deliveries are being adequately recorded. Alusine Binneh Kamara, head teacher of the Ahmadiyya Muslim primary school  in Kambia, has developed a system to monitor schools’ purchases from smallholders in his area and guarantee that all neighbouring institutions are following through with the home-grown school meals bookkeeping and financial records.  

Around 53% of the 7 million people living in Sierra Leone face poverty and school feeding is regarded as an important social protection solution to help fight hunger and malnutrition. School Feeding in Sierra Leone is currently implemented in 14 out of 16 districts, covering over 640,000 students. The National Government delivers school meals with support from several partners, including WFP. Current school feeding initiatives, however, face operational challenges and these programme’s food baskets are mainly based in non-perishable imported goods, such as rice. Aiming to provide more nutritious meals in schools and foster local economic development, Sierra Leone’s 2021 School Feeding Policy proposes a shift from current initiatives to a home-grown school feeding model.  

The aim of this collaboration between WFP in Brazil and Sierra Leone is to share the countries’ experiences in home-grown school feeding to strengthen the model currently in place in Sierra Leone and prepare it for scale-up.   

As part of the technical assistant provided by the WFP Centre of Excellence, the government of Sierra Leone also took part in the “Virtual Study Visit: Brazil”. Around 37 participants from various home-grown school feeding implementing sectors and Non-Governmental Organisations gathered in person in Freetown, while WFP staff and government district officers, as well as experts from Brazil and Sierra Leone, joined online. The “Virtual Study Visit: Brazil” is a joint initiative by the WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil, the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC) and the National Fund for Education Development (FNDE) which aims to showcase the successful Brazilian experience of its National School Feeding Programme (PNAE) to cooperating countries. 

Learn more here.

Between April 5 and 7, the city of Barranquilla, in Colombia, hosted the 9^th edition of the Regional School Feeding Forum for Latin America and the Caribbean. The event, which had a hybrid format, was organized by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the Colombian Food to Learn Unit. The event promoted technical

The WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil and the Brazilian government participated in several sessions. On Wednesday, April 6, Vinicius Limongi, from the Centre of Excellence Programme team, moderated a session on the role of South-South and Trilateral Cooperation to improve governance systems and the management of school feeding programmes in the region. The session was attended by Karine Santos, Coordinator of the National School Feeding Programme in Brazil; Francisco Durán, from the General Directorate of Food and Community Development in Mexico; and Lena Arias, from WFP in Peru.

The WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil and the Brazilian government participated in several sessions. On Wednesday, April 6, Vinicius Limongi, from the Centre of Excellence Programme team, moderated a session on the role of South-South and Trilateral Cooperation to improve governance systems and the management of school feeding programmes in the region. The session was attended by Karine Santos, Coordinator of the National School Feeding Programme in Brazil; Francisco Durán, from the General Directorate of Food and Community Development in Mexico; and Lena Arias, from WFP in Peru.

In an experiences exchange exercise, the panellists shared learning and cooperation tools. “The theme of School Feeding today, in the context of South-South Cooperation, is discussed much more in terms of improving programmes, ensuring sustainable funding, investing in nutrition and socioeconomic impact. In Latin America, the similarities between the countries of the region promote a prioritization of topics such as family farming, local markets and problems such as childhood obesity,” said Vinicius Limongi.

The panel also addressed the importance of not thinking of Cooperation as a replication of models and also looking at learning arising from the challenges faced by other countries. In addition, the benefits of working together with partners such as WFP, which can streamline cooperation processes, was highlighted. “The presence of international organizations in countries and access to information and documentation is a catalyst for long-term cooperation efforts in school feeding,” said Lena Arias.

Challenges and opportunities in school feeding

Throughout the event, experts and representatives from governments and international organizations discussed current challenges and opportunities to strengthen school feeding. Karine Santos, Coordinator of the National School Feeding Programme in Brazil, emphasized the need to think about these programmes strategically. “We need to see these school feeding policies as a state policy, not a policy that undergoes change with each government. May we in fact make our school feeding policies a human right, allowing us to serve all our students,” she said.

Funding for school meals programmes was also discussed. “In Uruguay, school feeding is guaranteed by a tax paid by everyone who owns real estate. The total collected by this tax is around $85 million, which is enough to cover the school feeding programme. Thus, the right of the pupils who receive it is already given and the beneficiaries know it. It is a policy legitimized and appropriated by the population,” explained Violeta Torrens, Director of Basic Education in Uruguay.

The challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which left millions of children without classes worldwide, were also discussed. For Julieta Cortés, from the Department of Education of the city of Armenia, Colombia, new processes need to be created to minimize setbacks. “In returning to classes after the pandemic, we see a very big educational setback, there are cases where we have to teach children to read again,” she warned. “COVID-19 is a message in itself that no country can work alone. Whether facing the pandemic, investing in our children through school feeding, we have to work together,” said Nesmy Manigat, Haiti’s Minister of Education and Vocational Training.

At the end of the event, participants approved a joint statement that reinforces the importance of strengthening regional learning networks and exchanges between countries in the region.

Since its launch in 2013, the International School Meals Day, celebrated on March 10, brings together students, school cooks, nutritionists, communities, businesses and health professionals from around the world to discuss the importance of school feeding and its impacts on well-being and education. The objectives of the date are to raise awareness about the importance of the nutritional quality of school feeding; emphasize the connection between healthy eating, education and learning; connect students from all over the world to promote healthy habits; share success stories; disseminate research; and to alert to the role of school feeding programmes in combating hunger and poverty. 

Over the past ten years, the WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil has supported countries around the world in creating and adapting school feeding programmes linked to local agriculture. Through South-South Cooperation, and in partnership with the Brazilian Cooperation Agency and the National Fund for Education Development, the good practices found in the Brazilian National School Feeding Programme have inspired – and continue to inspire – similar programmes in several countries. Here are some of these stories. 

Bangladesh  

The WFP Centre of Excellence’s support to Bangladesh began in 2012, when a delegation visited Brazil to learn about the country’s experience with school feeding and its solid institutional framework for food and nutrition security. After the mission to Brazil, the Centre of Excellence continued to support Bangladesh and, in July 2013, the government and WFP started a pilot school feeding project. The pilot connected school feeding to family farming to assess the benefits, risks and challenges of the adoption of this modality on a national scale. With positive results in terms of attendance, a drop in the rate of school dropout and better school performance, the government decided to move forward with the development of a national school feeding policy. The National School Feeding Strategy was approved in 2019. Learn more.   

Gambia 

The Centre of Excellence’s support to the Gambia over the past few years has involved both issues related to school feeding and social protection, as well as the development of projects to access international funds. In 2014, a delegation from the Gambia came to Brazil to learn about the Zero Hunger Strategy, with emphasis on the National School Feeding Programme and its links with family farming. The study visit inspired the Gambian government to draw up a National Action Plan for School Feeding. In the following years, other actions in the field of school feeding were developed with the support of the Centre of Excellence. In 2020, following the positive response from the Technical Advisory Committee and Coordinating Unit of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), which approved funding for the country’s project, the Centre of Excellence, WFP and the African Development Bank, as well as designated supervisors, continued with a detailed plan for evaluating and implementing the project done remotely. Learn more. 

Mozambique 

The Centre of Excellence has supported Mozambique since 2011 with several actions, including training, meetings with ministries, missions to Brazil and participation in international events with various partners and projects. Over the years and with active participation of WFP’s global and country offices and technical support from the Centre of Excellence in Brazil, the National School Feeding Programme in Mozambique (PRONAE) was developed and approved in 2014. In recent years, despite the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Centre of Excellence has advanced its support to Mozambique both in the development and evaluation of PRONAE, as well as in the advancement of the Beyond Cotton Project in the country. 

Kenya  

Kenya’s cooperation with the Government of Brazil began in 2009, when the WFP country office began to benefit from South-South exchanges with officials from the Brazilian Ministry of Education. Between 2011 and 2017, Kenya received direct support from the WFP Centre of Excellence in Brazil to strengthen its school feeding programme and develop the National School Feeding and Nutrition Strategy. In 2013, the Kenyan government began preparing for the sustainable expansion of its home-grown school feeding programme. In 2018, the government formally approved and launched the National School Feeding and Nutrition Strategy. In 2019, the process of transferring accountability from WFP’s school feeding programme to the Kenyan government was finalized. Despite the completion of the process, WFP continues to act as a partner of the Kenyan government, collaborating with technical support whenever necessary. Learn more.  

African Union 

The Centre of Excellence supported the African Union (AU) in the process of consolidating its Continental Educational Strategy for Africa (CESA), which was approved by the African Union Commission in 2016. With South-South and Triangular Cooperation, WFP country offices and the Centre of Excellence have developed a number of tools, structures and documents to make school feeding an integral part of CESA. The full delivery of these products took place in 2020, and the AU is currently advancing with full ownership. Between 2012 and 2014, the Centre of Excellence hosted several delegations from AU member states and organized regional and international events in Africa to promote discussions on the link between school feeding and rural development. In 2015, after a robust political dialogue and advocacy work, the AU sent a delegation to Brazil to learn about the experience in school feeding. Another important result of this work was the designation of March 1 as African Day of School Feeding. The date marked the commitment of African countries to the promotion of school feeding programs linked to local food production as a strategy to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more.  

Find out more in the book “A Decade of Cooperation: 10 Years of WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger in Brazil“. 

Under a UN-UN agreement, the Food and Agriculture Organization  (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil have joined efforts to contribute to the momentum being built by the School Meals Coalition. The goal of the initiative is to strengthen country capacity in Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF), particularly through synergies between local food, agriculture, and smallholder farmers, encouraging inclusive procurement and short value chains for better nutrition. This collaboration aims to collect evidence, share best practices, produce on-line training materials and provide technical support to some countries for linking smallholder farmers to school meals in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.  

The initiative has three main goals: conduct an assessment of the state of HGSF in the three regions and compile a diversity of case studies and lessons learned from selected countries in the Global South; develop a training methodology and learning tools to support policy development of a nutrition-sensitive value chain approach for school meals programmes, based on the challenges and opportunities of the assessment conducted previously and the existing wealth of materials produced by the Rome-based agencies for food security; and provide on-line technical support to three selected countries through the developed learning package and tailored exchanges between the WFP Centre of Excellence in Brazil, FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Country Offices, and local stakeholders. The selection of countries will be based on consultations with FAO and WFP Country and Regional Offices and the national policy relevance for the local government.   

In addition to capacity development, the primary outcome for partner countries will be the joint preparation of a national roadmap for strengthening smallholder farmers’ capacities to supply school meals programmes, considering the country’s priorities and context. The activities will be developed throughout 2022, with the first assessment report and training materials being produced in the first semester and the country technical support in the second semester. Due to the remaining COVID-19 travel restrictions, the project will be implemented remotely, taking advantage of the Rome-based agencies’ new technologies and experience on remote assistance over the past years.  

The International Day of Education, celebrated on 24 January, was created by the United Nations General Assembly to highlight the role of education for peace and development. In a message recorded especially for the date, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted the impacts of the pandemic for students around the world. “Today, school closures continue to affect the lives of more than 31 million students, exacerbating a global learning crisis,” he said. Education is a prominent public good and an essential facilitator for the entire 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” he added.

In addition to being a space for cognitive and psychosocial development, the school is also the place where children in the most vulnerable communities around the world have their only balanced meal of the day, which represents an important strategy to combat hunger and malnutrition. Over the 10 years of its operations, the WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil has worked with partner countries to create and strengthen accessible school feeding programmes that are adapted to local specificities while offering locally sourced food.

Social gains

Adequate health and nutrition are essential for students to learn and perform better overall. In addition, school feeding serves as an incentive for school attendance, while also to removing from families the financial burden of providing nutritious and fresh food daily, and supporting those families who are unable to provide those meals. By benefiting children and their families, the food served at school helps create what is called human capital, which combines health, skills, knowledge, experience, and habits of a population.

When school feeding is linked to local agriculture, it also benefits the economy. Taking all of this into consideration, it is possible to say that an investment of US$ 1 in school feeding can generate up to US$ 9 in return. In a recent study conducted by the Centre of Excellence, it is possible to see, in practice, the advantages of investment in school feeding  programmes in São Tomé and Príncipe. The publication is available here.

Pandemic

During the pandemic and the closure of schools, several countries had to adapt their school feeding programmes to ensure the distribution of food to these populations. Among the solutions adopted by local governments are the review of the benefits allocated per child, the review of the distribution modality and direct cash transfers.

In Brazil, the National School Feeding Programme (PNAE), which serves more than 40 million students with daily nutritious meals, was adapted so that food would continue to reach the families of students who remained at home with the closing of schools. To learn more about the adaptations made to the programme, please download this publication.

On December 22nd, the WFP Centre of Excellence Against Hunger Brazil participated in the final presentation of capstone projects prepared by students in the Professional Master’s Degree in International Policy Analysis and Management, a graduate programme at the Institute of International Relations (IRI) at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). The students, with the support of the Centre of Excellence, have analysed the different pandemic adaptation strategies developed by four countries in the global South to adapt the implementation and guarantee continuity to their school feeding programmes in the context of school closures.  

The students focused on the distinct response strategies, highlighting challenges and learnings in policy adaptation in an emergency manner and in a context of great uncertainty. The project aimed to review the potential impact of the pandemic on the school feeding programmes in a multidimensional way, focusing on the thematic axes of nutrition, school performance and local agriculture. 

This initial project is part of a wider partnership established between the WFP Centre of Excellence and the PUC Rio’s Institute of International Relations. Over the coming years, the Centre of Excellence and IRI will work together to produce research and knowledge relevant to the real challenges and opportunities experienced by countries assisted by the Centre. The goal is to engage students and promote the production of graduate research on areas such as the impact on school feeding programmes, food and nutrition security of vulnerable populations, food systems and rural development.  

With the technical and institutional support of WFP, the graduate students will have the opportunity to develop professional and academic work that can support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 2, aimed at zero hunger and the promotion of sustainable agriculture; and SDG 17, which focuses on strengthening means of implementation and the revitalization of global partnerships for sustainable development by 2030. The results of this collaboration should provide important subsidies for WFP Centre of Excellence’s assistance to partner countries. 

About WFP – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest humanitarian agency, saving lives in emergencies and contributing to peace, stability, and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters, and climate change impacts through food assistance and food and nutrition security projects. The Centre of Excellence Against Hunger is the result of a partnership between the WFP and the Brazilian government. The mission of the Centre of Excellence is to support developing countries in creating and implementing sustainable solutions against hunger, inspired by successful experiences developed in Brazil. The WFP Centre of Excellence also acts as a global hub for policy dialogue and knowledge about food systems. 

About IRI – The Institute of International Relations (IRI) at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) is a centre of excellence in the area of International Relations in Brazil. During its more than 30 years of existence, the Institute has been a pioneer in research on Brazil’s foreign policy, in Latin America’s political and economic changes, and transformations in the world order. Its Graduate Programme trains researchers who work in several universities in the country and abroad, and its Undergraduate Program has been ranked among the five best in the country and the best in Rio de Janeiro. The Institute is internationally recognized as a reference in teaching and research within the discipline of International Relations and maintains a diversified network of partnerships with important universities abroad. PUC-Rio is one of the best universities in the country, with 24 departments and 11 complementary units dedicated to research, teaching, and extension. 

School Feeding in traditional communities: The quilombola PNAE

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In 2020, the National Assembly of Togo unanimously approved the National School Feeding Law. The law is the result of a long process of advocacy, analysis of the experiences of other countries and intense cooperation, with the participation of the WFP. Since the approval, the national government of Togo has been implementing the School Feeding programme in line with the law and is on track to turn the programme into an important state policy.

The joint efforts of the WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil and the WFP country office to support the government of Togo in strengthening national school feeding capacities has included, over the years, establishing legal and regulatory foundations, regular communication and sharing of experiences through face-to-face missions, remote activities and facilitation of Togo’s participation in events for exchanges with countries in the global south, such as the Global Forum on Child Nutrition. In 2014, a delegation from Togo came to Brazil for a study visit organized by the Centre of Excellence and the WFP country office to learn about the Brazilian experience in school meals linked to local agriculture.

As a result of this visit, in 2015 the Centre of Excellence, with the support of the Brazilian government, carried out a series of missions to the country to support the development of the National School Feeding Policy. In 2016, the government of Togo held the first national forum on the topic, which was attended by 300 people, including national actors in the field of school feeding and representatives from Brazil, Benin, Burundi, Côte D’Ivoire, Niger and Senegal. The forum discussed the implementation of Togo’s National School Feeding Policy in a series of round tables, working groups and field visits and recommended the adoption of a school feeding law.

Find out more in the book “A Decade of Cooperation: 10 years of the WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil”.

To download the publication “Country Experiences: Togo”, click here.