The Africa Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) in partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Government of Ghana has organised a 2-day workshop on the development of Continental Home Grown School Feeding (HSSF) guidelines in Accra, Ghana on 5th – 6th December 2019.
The regional workshop was intended as a Africa Member States consultative forum to help come up with guidelines that can support countries during implementation of HGSF programmes or in reviewing existing programmes to make them more structured and better organized.
Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection hon. Cythia Morrison (fifth from left, front row) in a group photo after she opened the workshop
The workshop agreed on number of issues all geared towards the successful implementation of Home Grown School Feeding on the continent
The goal of the workshop was to develop HGSF implementation guidelines and reporting tool for the African Union Member States. It also reviewed school feeding draft guideline content and determined format of implementation guidelines
It shared experiences on school feeding implementation steps and current challenges requiring guidance from countries around the table. The experts also identified aspects of HGSF programming requiring guidance based on experiences from countries
The African Union Member States agreed on key continental indicators for monitoring and reporting of home grown school feeding programmes. There was also a consensus on the outline of the Continental Biennial format for executive report to Heads of State and Governments
Ghana school feeding programme National Coordinator, Mrs. Gertrude Quashigah (first right) addressing participants
The workshop brought together about 30 technical persons from 15 member states including school feeding programme managers, nutritionists, agriculture staff and those with M&E background. The workshop considered two participants SF/HGSF who were either SF/HGSF programme manager or a nutritionist and someone from Ministry of Agriculture.
Reps from the following countries attended; Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Mali, Ethiopia, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Madagascar.
AUDA-NEPAD (previously NEPAD) acknowledged Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) back in 2003 as an initiative to promote food security and rural development and launched HGSF pilots in 11 countries (FAO & WFP 2018), under the NEPAD CAADP Framework for Africa’s Food Security.