The reach of school meals in low-income countries remains four percent below pre-pandemic levels, despite a recovery overall, according to a new World Food Programme (WFP) report.
The number of children fed by school meals has fallen by approximately four per cent in low-income countries, with the biggest declines observed in Africa, The State of School Feeding Worldwide 2022 published March 21, 2023 noted.
High-income, upper middle-income and lower middle-income countries showed a consistent, modest increase of 4 per cent, 4 per cent and 12 per cent, respectively, the report showed.
It highlighted the need for external development partners to particularly target support at low-income countries.
Despite other post-pandemic demands and cash constraints, low-income countries have increased their domestic funding for school meals up from 30 per cent in 2020 to 45 per cent in 2022.
But contributions from donors have fallen from 69 per cent to 55 per cent, a shortfall which is likely to reflect donors’ competing priorities and which has resulted in lower coverage despite even the poorest countries taking on an increasing share of the burden.
The increased levels of domestic funding have not been matched by levels of international support for school feeding, which instead have fallen to $214 million in 2022 from approximately $267 million in 2020.
Approximately 420 million children around the world receive school meals, an increase of 30 million (approximately 7 per cent) from the 388 million children reported in the 2020 edition of this report.
Of the 30 million increases in the number of children receiving school meals between 2020 and 2022, the five countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa accounted for 19 million of the increase in the number of children fed, the report stated.
School meal programmes are a critical safety net for vulnerable children and households, especially at a time when 345 million people face crisis levels of hunger worldwide, including 153 million children and young people, according to WFP.
School meals programmes can increase enrollment rates by 9 per cent and attendance by 8 per cent, the report said. It also cited research showing that school feeding programmes can have beneficial effects on agriculture, education, health and nutrition as well as social protection, with $9 in returns for every $1 invested.
School meal programmes are also an important contributor to job creation, in the range of 1,000-2,000 jobs for every 100,000 children receiving school meals. The vast majority of these jobs are cooks and food preparers, but there are also opportunities for other roles.
The study analysis is based on a sample of 176 countries, up from 163 countries in 2020. The reported data were available from 176 countries, accounting for approximately 1.2 billion school-age children — those enrolled in pre-school, primary and secondary schools in the countries.