1. Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programmes: Following the completion of three case studies in Southern Africa (Botswana, Namibia and South Africa), individual countries were sensitised to incorporate the Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) model into existing school feeding programmes, and ensuring that procurement for the programmes was locally sourced.
Supported by NEPAD since 2007, Botswana’s School Feeding Programme, reaches out to 330,000 children by providing healthy and adequate meals at school. The programme has proven to be successful according to two reports done by the Botswana Institute of Development Policy Analysis (BIDPA) in collaboration with the NEPAD Agency and the Partnership for Child Development (PCD) in 2013. The outcomes reveal that the Programme has made an important contribution to employment and is highly appreciated by the children and the community. The reports state that the parents of the children have also gained by having been employed as cooks. They grind sorghum, one of the country’s staple foods, using their hands in a process called hand stamping. The sorghum porridge combined with other foods, provide healthy and nutritious meals for children at the schools, supplementing many who would otherwise not afford a good meal at home. The launch of the Home-Grown School Feeding Programme in will further strengthen the country’s local economy and provide small-holder farmers with a source of income.
A mapping of existing school feeding programmes (both regular and Home-Grown-School Feeding HGSF models) in Africa was completed and shows that close to 90 per cent of countries have implemented school feeding programmes, with a growing number adopting the HGSF model.
2. Mainstreaming nutrition in National Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans: While many CAADP NAfSIPs include nutritional goals, most are lacking the concrete actions needed to ensure nutrition security. This gap is being addressed by NEPAD’s initiative to strengthen capacity for addressing nutrition in the formulation and implementation of NAFSIPs. The NEPAD Agency held sub-regional workshops in Botswana to ensure that agricultural and economic development policies and initiatives are nutrition-sensitive and have a clear approach, stronger capacities and clear road maps for implementation.
3. On-going technical support to strengthen the national-level knowledge management platform.
4. A programme to provide skills to Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) was launched.
5. Measuring Cost of Hunger in Africa (COHA) study: Botswana is among the third-phase countires (Cameroon, Botswana, Kenya, Mauritania) to implement the COHA study. The overarching objective of the multi-country study led by the AUC, NEPAD, WFP and UNECA, is to catalyse coordinated action and inform the design of nutrition-oriented policy frameworks and programmes, with greater investments to eradicate child undernutrition on the continent.