The factors stated above highlight the need for making school lunches available to all children. However, the Zambian government does not have the resources, financial or human, to be able to do this. Therefore WFP and the Zambian government are looking to other models, such as homegrown school feeding, that will encourage communities to take responsibility for feeding their own children. Hopefully, these models will provide a more sustainable means of ensuring that children have a meal each day at school.
As part of WFP’s commitment to handing over the school feeding programme to the government, WFP aims for a "staged" process that allows a reasonable amount of time to concretize government inputs and management procedures.
What would be the sources of funding for any expansion of the school feeding program? What has been the effect of high food prices on this funding effort?
Government financial commitment and established budget lines facilitate WFP’s exit programmes. When the government contributes financially to school feeding programs from the beginning, it is easier to secure the resources necessary for an eventual takeover by the government. WFP will work with government to decrease the role of food and external assistance, and increase institutional support for the school feeding programme.
Considering the existence of favorable agro-ecological conditions and a good policy environment in Zambia, WFP believes that there is plenty of opportunity for the government to undertake a homegrown school feeding initiative. There is obviously a need to advocate for sustaining the school feeding activity through locally produced foods and successful integration of the initiative with the national priorities highlighted in Zambia’s fifth national development plan. However, the government will need external assistance to enable effective functioning of the homegrown school feeding concept as a food safety-net programme.
In Zambia, prices of maize and other staples have risen by over 25% and fuel by over 37% since January 2007. These increases already pose problems for the food-insecure, both in urban areas and remote rural areas where production costs and market prices are further increased by higher transportation costs. The situation is so serious that earlier in the year the President constituted an inter-ministerial committee to look into the effects and causes of the rising food prices.
The impact of soaring food prices has directly affected the school feeding programme in Zambia, compelling WFP to reduce the ration size just in order to reach the children who are already enrolled in the school feeding programme. In relation to this, WFP Zambia drafted a proposal to look for additional funding to respond to the increasing needs of vulnerable children.
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