Officials from the WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger in Brazil were in Senegal from February 17 to 21 to support the revision of the National School Feeding Policy and the development of nutritional guidelines for school meals in the country.
Senegal has set ambitious targets to expand school feeding, aiming to serve 65% of public primary schools by 2028.
The mission took place within the framework of a cooperation project signed between the WFP Centre of Excellence, the WFP country office in Senegal and the Government of France and was designed to strengthen the school feeding approach with local purchases, improve policy frameworks and carry out strategic planning on the subject.
Over the course of a week, officers Vinícius Limongi, Ana Clara Cathalat, Livia Martins and Mariana de Carvalho met with various representatives of the bodies involved and learned about the social and institutional context of school feeding in the country. They also mapped public policies, legal frameworks and ongoing initiatives.
The Center of Excellence has a long-standing partnership with Senegal. The first contact was in 2012, and since then, the country has adopted important procedures, such as the creation of intersectoral coordination mechanisms around school feeding.
The mission’s agenda included a visit to a school and central kitchens in the department of Rufisque, in the peri-urban area of Dakar. This made it possible to see in situ how school feeding works, assess the available infrastructure, identify good practices and challenges, and strengthen the dialogue with school managers, authorities and the community involved in implementing the program.