Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programmes particularly in Africa are not normally designed from scratch but first created by a country with the support of developing partners such as the Partnership for Child Development (PCD), the World Food Programme (WFP) and other stakeholders. HGSF then evolves as part of the transition to government ownership by linking existing school feeding programme demand with local agriculture production. 

Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) initiatives require structures in place that can fall under policies, rules, regulations, skills and capacities. The programme depends on efficiently integrating and coordinating services in school feeding, strategic procurement and agricultural development.

Background of exisiting policies

Since 1980, the World Food Programme and the Kenyan Ministry of Education (MoE) have been implementing school feeding programmes in Kenya. Between the two agencies 1.2 milion children have been reached.  These experiences have not translated into a national school feeding programme and currently there is no national school health and nutrition policy. (KESSEP 2005-2010) However, existing policies relating to school health are scattered across a variety of ministries making them extremely difficult to access and implement.

Despite not having a national school feeding programme, it has been included in the sectional paper No 1 of a 2005 policy framework for education which highlighted the need for schools meals and called for the expansion of the programme, There has been an institutional framework provided by the Kenyan education sector support programme which included school feeding as one of the components of the school health, nutrition and feeding programmes, and the 2008 national nutrition and food security policy which has a section on school meals and the need to enhance and expand school feeding programmes.

The Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation (MOPHS), MOE and other partners implementing programmes on school health and nutrition have developed a policy and guidelines on school health. The national school health policy provides a framework from coordination of the stakeholders through the creation of coordination committees at national and lower levels.

A strategic plan for the national School Health, Nutrition and Meals programme (SHN&M) is being developed.  This document that is still in draft is a product of various hands on experiences, practice and knowledge from Development partners, Individuals from the MOE and other SHN&M related ministries, and other stakeholder representatives. This document outlines the priorities of the SHN&M programme for the period of 2011- 2015.

In many developing countries, school feeding is mentioned in the countries’ poverty reduction strategies, often linked to the agriculture, education, nutrition, or social protection sectors, or in sectoral policies or plans. National planning should ensure that the government has identified the most appropriate role for HGSF in its development agenda. With donor harmonization efforts underway, it is increasingly important that, if made a priority, HGSF is included in sector plans, which form the basis for basket funding or sectorwide approaches that determine the allocation of donor resources.