The government’s contribution to the national school feeding programme is projected to rise from Rwf94 billion in the current year to Rwf135 billion in the 2025/26 fiscal year which will commence on July 1, an official has said.

Sam Ngabire, the coordinator of the home-grown school feeding project at the Ministry of Education, provided the update on Wednesday, June 11, while discussing developments in the national school feeding programme and its connectivity to agriculture, at the African Conference on Agricultural Technologies (ACAT).

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The government has been implementing the school feeding programme since 2014.

After realising its importance, Ngabire said, the government approved a National School Feeding Policy in 2019.

Initially, the programme only benefited secondary school-day students but the new policy scaled it up to benefit all students from pre-primary to the entire secondary education.

In 2021, when the policy was approved, the programme benefitted 3.3 million learners, Ngabire said, adding that the government was faced with challenges including school drop-out, malnutrition, and issues regarding connecting farmers to the programme – for food supply.

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The number of students benefiting from the programme, he said, went up from 3.3 million in October 2021 to 4.5 million currently, with government investments also increased to respond to the trend.

Before the programme expansion, he said, the government funding to the programme was around Rwf6 billion.

With the reform, it gradually went up, reaching Rwf78 billion in the fiscal year 2023/24, and then Rwf94 billion in 2024/25.

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The government, he said, is committed to ensuring the sustainability of the national school feeding programme and the continuous provision of nutritious meals.

"We are working with different stakeholders, government ministries, institutions and development partners to ensure that school meals are improved,” he observed.