WE ARE FAILING OUR CHILDREN

OUR children must be asking themselves if their parents have serious intentions to give them a bright future. The question arises from everyday challenges they are confronted with, which begs for serious answers.We cannot give them jobs or provide them with medication in hospitals and clinics and now we cannot even guarantee the food we promised in schools. This is besides compromising the quality of their education with a shortage of classes, teachers and learning materials.

Crumbling

What gives rise to this question are reports of a crumbling feeding programme that serves as the only nutritious meal of the day for thousands of learners. Head teachers have resorted to cutting short the schools timetable to send pupils home, so they may try get to find something to eat. Some schools have already called parents to crisis meetings and resolved to make contributions to the schools, because the Ministry of Education is simply failing to cope with the demand. As the year began and schools were preparing to open, we had been assured by the Ministry of Education that the challenges facing food distribution in schools would be a thing of the past, but clearly not.

The ministry has been beleaguered by challenges since then, with Principal Secretary Bheki Gama being given forced leave due to his health. Prior to this, there appeared to be disharmony among the staff so it is of no surprise really that execution of responsibilities was compromised. Added to this, were reports of government experiencing a cash flow crunch that saw delayed payment to suppliers, one of whom was the supplier identified to distribute food to the schools.

Protected

Sadly, the children in our schools have been affected. They are supposed to be protected from all these failings to fully concentrate on obtaining quality education. In low-income developing countries, school feeding programmes are essential for improving pupils’ well-being and education access. Eswatini, like many African governments, experienced a very high enrolment rate of above 85 per cent after the full implementation of the school feeding programme, as it not only provided daily healthy meals for schools to promote attendance and performance, but served to combat hunger and poverty. This initiative also helped lower dropout rates, especially among disadvantaged communities.

The sustainability of the programme was always going to be a concern from when the main donors scaled down the funding, leaving government to absorb the major costs. The current challenges indicate that it may not have been properly planned for.

So where to from here?
School feeding programmes are important, but free education from basic to tertiary level, where the demand for scholarships raises the cost concerns, needs an urgent review.
One is aware that the new Education minister has undertaken a process to consult widely on the reforms needed in our education system to make it more effective and relevant to the current times.  Getting the right funding model is the key and there are several sister African states that have managed to overcome the hurdles we are facing today that have lessons to share. The common factor among the sustainable feeding programmes is the involvement of local communities, parents and stakeholders who are engaged from planning to execution level.Let us not kid ourselves, government - which is us the taxpayers - cannot carry the entire cost of this programme. This effort needs to be augmented by a well coordinated education resource mobilisation, business and non-governmental organisations (NGO) sector funding.

Partnerships

Public-private partnerships need to be considered here.  We could look into how partnerships like the Dangote Foundation, World Food Programme, Equity Group Foundation and Mastercard Foundation work together to improve school meal programmes in Nigeria, Kenya and Rwanda. A ministry partnership with local agribusinesses needs to be considered to supply fresh vegetables for school meals as this may have ripple effects of boosting local economies, ensure food security. Parent-teacher associations, school committees and youth organisations can join hands to mobilise resources, advocate for legislative support and assess programme effects at the grassroots level.

This may respond to the call for more of our unemployed youth to venture into agriculture as the education sector would provide a guaranteed market. The bottom line is, we need to revisit how we are executing this programme, because our children will never forgive us for failing them where it matters the most in their lives.

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