Mozambique is a country in Africa that has suffered from numerous natural disasters, including two straight years of massive flooding along the Zambezi River. The flooding has not only displaced many families but destroyed their harvests. Drought has also harmed food production.

Poverty is widespread in Mozambique, with 69% of its population living below below the poverty line according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). School feeding can help break this cycle of poverty. We will look more closely at school feeding in Mozambique with Carla Honwana of the United Nations World Food Programme.

How many children are benefiting from the WFP school feeding programs in the country?

The Food for Education (school feeding) programme in Mozambique has two components:
Boarding School Feeding (BSF), which provides support to 26,556 students in 152 boarding institutions, and Day School Feeding (DSF), which provides support to 199,851 students in 172 primary day schools

In addition, 21,000 orphaned and vulnerable children and 14,000 girls in 123 of the 172 assisted primary schools receive a take-home ration of food support twice a year based on their school attendance record.

Education in Mozambique: The education system in Mozambique consists of five years of lower primary education (EP1, grades 1-5), two years of upper primary education (EP2, grades 6-7) and five years of general secondary education (ESG, grades 8-12). Technical and vocational training are also provided at a variety of institutions throughout the country, and Mozambique has several universities located in major urban areas. The lower and upper levels of primary education (grades 1-7) are considered the basic education to which every child is entitled.

Discuss what effect the meals have on the children in terms of school attendance, performance and nutrition.

Impact of Food Support on Boarding School Students

The existing school network in Mozambique is insufficient to provide primary and secondary education within easy reach of every child. This is due to the size of the country, the low population density in some areas, and, foremost, the destruction of school infrastructure during the country’s protracted internal conflict (1977-1992). Many schools have very large catchment areas, often up to 50 km for the second level of the primary school (grades 6 and 7) and even more at secondary level and beyond.

Many children thus depend on boarding facilities for their schooling. Boarding schools receive a budget from the Government for operational costs, including the costs of food items not covered by WFP (i.e. vegetables, meat, or fish), but this budget is hardly sufficient to cover all the costs. In fact, it is the cost of food needed for boarders that puts these schools out of the reach of most rural farm families. WFP’s boarding school programme makes a fundamental contribution to increasing access for these children, especially to secondary education.