Since the end of 2016, the WFP Centre of Excellence, through its South-South cooperation programme, is supporting the government of Zimbabwe in developing a national school feeding strategy. After three missions by the WFP Centre to Zimbabwe to assess the status and potential of school feeding in the country, in July the government conducted a national school feeding workshop that marks the transition from the diagnosis stage to the elaboration of the strategy document.
The theme of the meeting was Consultative Workshop for the Strengthening of the Home-grown School Feeding Programme through Multi-sectoral Linkages. The workshop followed the SABER methodology (Systems Approach for Better Education Results), which analyses the policy framework, the financial capacity, the institutional capacity and coordination, the design and implementation, and the community participation in school feeding initiatives. The discussions were based on the diagnosis and recommendations made by the WFP Centre of Excellence after the three diagnostic missions.
The goal of the workshop was to engage different sectors in the discussion of the national home-grown school feeding strategy and to prepare an action plan based on the inter-sectoral analysis of the country’s current situation regarding school feeding.
Zimbabwe is engaged in South-South cooperation with the WFP Centre of Excellence since 2014, when a governmental delegation made a study visit to Brazil. Since then, the country has been working on structuring school feeding in the country. Due to the severe drought that affected agricultural production and food security in the region, the government initiated a school feeding programme to provide emergency assistance to the population. The government\’s intention now is to transform the emergency school feeding initiative into a sustainable programme in a way that takes advantage of what has already been put in place and of the structure created by the government.
The minister of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development, Nyasha Chikwinya, and the minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Dr. Lazarus Dokora, participated in the event. Eddie Rowe, director of the WFP country office, was also in attendance. Dr. Dokora said, “this workshop is a milestone for Zimbabwe that marks the transition from intermittent interventions in school feeding for the establishment of a long-lasting strategy”.
The ministries of Agriculture, Finance, Health and Child Care, Youth, Social Welfare, and the Food and Nutritional Council, responsible for inter-sectoral coordination within the government, also sent representatives to the event, as well as local and international civil society organizations.
