Lesotho: A New Dawn for School Feeding in Lesotho

Maseru — Lesotho is putting into practice an old saying: “it takes a village to raise a child”, as it refashions its national school feeding programme to become more inclusive of the local agricultural sector. Lesotho recognizes it will take a community to feed a child, and to also create a sustainable, home-grown feeding programme that benefits both children and smallholder farmers (All Africa; 2014).

On 18 November 2014, government and various parties endorsed Lesotho’s National School Feeding Policy. The policy was formulated by the Ministry of Education and Training with support from WFP and outlines how relevant sectors will cooperate to provide free and nutritious school meals to children throughout the country. WFP played a critical role in the designing of the “home-grown” component of the national policy, which will facilitate stocking schools’ food supplies by buying largely from local farmers (All Africa; 2014).

As the agricultural sector in Lesotho takes on more responsibility for feeding its children, the home-grown concept shows exciting potential to benefit local communities and develop the country’s rural economy (All Africa; 2014).

Currently, school feeding in Lesotho is divided between WFP (covering 200,000 pupils) and the government (which caters for another 200,000). Food for Lesotho’s 400,000 school-going children is imported and bought from local sources (All Africa; 2014).

The aim is to help smallholder farmers increase their production levels and revenue, and also diversify their operations into food processing. Through a Share-Crop initiative that complements the National School Feeding Policy, the government is partnering with smallholder farmers to share 50 per cent of all costs of food production, including land preparation and inputs such as seeds and fertilizer. The farmers and government will share the produce, which will be allocated to various programmes, including school feeding (All Africa; 2014).

“A home-grown school feeding programme will facilitate the access of farmers to a predictable local market and ultimately promote agricultural and rural development,” said Lethusang Hanyane, the Deputy Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (All Africa; 2014).

With WFP, the government and other stakeholders working together through a variety of creative and collaborative approaches, Lesotho is making great strides towards a year-round crop production to benefit school feeding (All Africa; 2014).

press release

By Tsitsi Matope

All Africa (2014) Lesotho: A New Dawn for School Feeding in Lesotho .https://allafrica.com/stories/201412082786.html [Accessed: 08 January 2015]

World Food Programme (2014) Lesotho: A New Dawn for School Feeding in Lesotho. https://www.wfp.org/stories/new-dawn-school-feeding-lesotho-0 [Accessed: 08 January 2015]