The poorest people in low and middle income countries tend to live in rural areas and earn their livelihood in the agricultural sector. School feeding is increasingly being viewed as a synergistic entry point to get children into school, which promises to not only improve educational outcomes, along with nutrition and the health status of poor and undernourished children, but which can also jumpstart local agricultural development in Africa.

The World Food Programme (WFP) and the Kenya Ministry of Education (MoE) have been the main executing agencies for school feeding programmes in Kenya since their inception. Between the two agencies 1.2 milion children have been reached.

Currently the Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme has adapted two new models: the Ministry of Education (MoE) Home Grown School Meals programme where the government transfers funds to 1,700 schools located in 28 semi arid districts to feed their 538,000 children and the second model Njaa Marufuku Kenya (NMK) of the Ministry Of Agriculture (MoA) which currently targets 31,720 children in 48 schools across six provinces in high poverty areas with a medium to high potential to grow food.

Despite this, the MoE School Health, Nutrition and Meals unit (SHN&M) does not possess adequate capacity in terms of personnel and facilities to handle the expanded demands that would be put on it by the implementation of the proposed SHN&M Programme and therefore the support from development partners and other key bodies is essential for the success of the programme.