– by Wawira Njiru
A growing movement across Africa shows school meals are more than nutrition—they’re infrastructure for learning, equity, and economic resilience.
In March 2025, Ghana earmarked a record GH₵1.788 billion (approximately $135 million) for its national school feeding program — signaling a growing shift across Africa to treat school meals not as charity, but as core development infrastructure. Over 80% of African governments now invest in school feeding, a trend driven by growing recognition that food in schools is more than nourishment — it’s fuel for learning, growth, and national prosperity.
Yet hunger remains one of the most persistent barriers to education on the continent. In Kenya alone, 11% of the country’s 24.6 million children under 18 experience food insecurity. For many, this means missed classes, stunted development, and diminished lifetime opportunity. The long-term cost is staggering as malnutrition continues to erode 16.5% of Africa’s annual GDP — a hidden tax on our collective future.
This is a solvable problem. What’s missing is a commitment to scalable, cost-effective models that are both locally grounded and nationally owned. The future of school feeding in Africa doesn’t lie in handouts — it lies in systems built for scale, with staying power.
Thirteen years ago, I started cooking meals for 25 schoolchildren in Ruiru, Kenya, using $1,200 raised from friends at university. We had no formal blueprint, just belief — and a simple truth: hungry kids can’t learn. Today, Food4Education delivers over 500,000 meals every school day across Kenya. But the most important part of that story is not the number. It’s how we got here — by blending smart, flexible capital with public investment, and designing solutions that fit our local context.
In our early days, we shaped our proposals to fit donor priorities. I remember reframing our work as a climate solution to meet a grant requirement — not untrue, but not our main focus at the time. Today, our green kitchen infrastructure runs near-zero waste, and 80% of our ingredients are sourced from local smallholder farmers. But the breakthrough came not from donor compliance — it came when we secured a partnership with local government, matched by funder support.
Now, 17 of our 30 centralized kitchens are co-owned with county governments. When we launched in Nairobi, we nearly doubled our reach in a single year — rivaling the scale of London’s universal school feeding program. Public systems, when well designed, can scale fast.
The returns are undeniable. UNESCO estimates that every $1 invested in school meals delivers up to $20 in social and economic returns. We’ve seen it ourselves. In Kenya, a $0.30 meal has become a magnet that draws students to over 1,500 schools. It’s also a livelihood engine, creating more than 4,500 direct jobs — most held by women — and anchoring regional agricultural supply chains by purchasing over 100 tons of food daily from local farmers. School meals, done right, can advance education, nutrition, gender equity, and rural economies — all at once.
But even the best models need stable financing and political will. In Kenya, national budget allocations for school feeding dropped from Ksh 5 billion (approx. $38.5 million) in FY2023/24 to Ksh 3.6 billion (approx. $27.7 million) in the current fiscal year — with projections falling further to Ksh 3 billion (approx. $23 million) next year. Such volatility risks undercutting national progress just as momentum is building.
As we look to scale school feeding across the continent, we need a shift: philanthropy should spark innovation, but only governments can institutionalize it.
This doesn’t mean governments must go it alone. At Food4Education, parents co-pay a small, subsidized amount per meal. These micro-payments create local ownership and provide an accountability loop that helps insulate programs from politicization or funding shocks. Smart capital blends public, private, and community contributions — all aligned to a common goal.
Africa’s demographic future is clear — one in four people globally will be African by 2050. What remains uncertain is whether we’ll equip that generation with the tools to thrive. School meals aren’t just a welfare program — they’re an investment in human capital. And like all infrastructure, they must be built to last.
We have the data. We have the demand. And in Kenya, we now have blueprints that work and that scale across Africa. It’s time to match that with investment, ownership, and trust in the people closest to the problem to lead the way.
Because you can’t build the future on an empty stomach.
Wawira Njiru is the Founder and CEO of Food4Education, an award-winning, locally rooted, and African-led solution to end classroom hunger. Her work has earned global recognition including the Skoll Award, The Audacious Project, and The Elevate Prize. Hear Wawira talk about her vision for ending classroom hunger on her TED Talk: go.ted.com/wawiranjiru
