Home-Grown School Feeding: From Hot Meal to Macroeconomic Tool - A Low-Hanging Fruit for Africa’s Urgent Challenges
Home-Grown School Feeding: From Hot Meal to Macroeconomic Tool - A Low-Hanging Fruit for Africa’s Urgent Challenges
This policy paper positions Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) as a transformative, Africa-led approach to advancing resilience across the continent, applying lessons learned from the Millennium Development Goals era. HGSF creates a bridge between education, agriculture, and community development that can be leveraged to tackle the interconnected “Triple Paradoxes” of Financing, Energy and Food Systems hampering Africa's progress. With returns as high as $9 for every $1 invested, HGSF offers a practical, immediate intervention to tackle Africa’s urgent needs while contributing to the continent's long-term development goals. By integrating the four essential dimensions of Peace and Security, Energy Access, Climate Adaptation, and Food Systems Transformation, HGSF programmes deliver sustainable benefits that extend beyond school meals. Equipped with renewable energy delivered through HGSF initiatives, schools serve as hubs for education, climate-smart practices, and local food production, helping stabilize rural economies and enhance state presence. Integrating energy access, climate adaptation, and food systems goals into these programmes can potentially double the return on investment. This paper illustrates how Africa-led, context-specific solutions can deliver immediate impacts and support the long-term resilience needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) across the continent. It underscores the continent's capacity to lead its own transformative development path through inclusive, home-based solutions like HGSF.