- NHGSFP – Home Grown School Feeding Programme
The National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) aims to deliver a cost-effective home grown school feeding programme with a specific focus on increasing school enrollment, reducing the incidence of malnutrition especially among the poor; empowering cooks while supporting local agriculture through small holder farmers, thereby stimulating economic growth through the socio economic value chain.
The Administration announced this programme with the view of tackling poverty and malnutrition, and also to encourage parents of children and vulnerable groups to educate their children. Ultimately, the school feeding component of the suite of National Social Investment Programmes (NSIPs) aims to support States to collectively feed over 24 million school children, making it the largest school feeding programme of its kind in Africa. Currently, in just one year of implementation, the programmes beneficiaries exceed 49 million.
More specifically, the NHGSFP’s primary focus areas aims to provide free school meals with food procured from local smallholder farmers by strengthening communities across the country to:
- Increase school enrolment and completion; In 2015, Nigeria had an out-of-school rate of 10.5 million;
- Improve child nutrition and health — Nigeria has the third largest population of chronically undernourished children in the world;
- Strengthen local agricultural economies by providing a school feeding market in which farmers can sell their produce directly, with the revival of community warehouses;
- Create employment opportunities with jobs in catering, processing, farming, etc.
For more information on the NHGSFP and the progress of feeding in your State, please visit the NHGSFP Twitter and Facebook @NHGSFP.