Opening the Global Child Nutrition Forum in Lusaka on 2 November, Zambia's Vice-President Mutale Nalumango told more than 400 delegates from 75 countries that "school feeding is not charity; it is a strategic investment in education, health, agriculture and national development." 

At least 466 million children eat at school, and national budgets cover 99% of the estimated US$84 billion (€75.5 billion) spent each year, World Food Programme (WFP) data show. In low-income countries, however, only 27% of primary schoolchildren receive school meals, and international funders cover about two-thirds of the cost. Zambia’s commitment to school feeding shows in its 2027 budget, which nearly doubles the allocation to K1 billion (€43.9 million), yet World Vision estimates that feeding all 6.6 million learners needs about K2.2 billion (€96.6 million). 

As countries expand towards universal coverage, many by 2030, quality matters as much as reach: more diverse, nutritious meals cost more and need systems that let diets diversify as programmes scale. That calls for funding beyond education budgets, from the health, agriculture, livestock, manufacturing, energy, and environment sectors that also gain from school meals.

SNV's work with governments and partners on programmes reaching 1.5 million children in Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, and Ethiopia shows what community engagement in school meals can bring to rural development. The meal is the visible end of a resilient system that runs back through farms, kitchens, communities, and budgets, and draws on diverse and heritage foods.

Nutritious, diverse meals depend on what farmers grow and how schools buy food, from procurement rules and pooled orders to prompt payment and food safety. In Rwanda, the Farm to Market Alliance, a WFP-led consortium with SNV as an implementing partner, has connected 75 cooperatives to school meal markets. 

In Uganda, The Inclusive Dairy Enterprise (TIDE), funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, supported 20,000 dairy farmers and gave 922,700 children daily milk, paid for by their parents. 

Supply is only half the equation. The food still has to be cooked, and across Africa, more than 90% of institutional cooking relies on firewood.

More than 90% of Kenya's 50,000-plus schools cook with firewood, and cooking energy can make up to 40% of a school meal's cost, according to a national survey backed by the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, the African Development Bank, and the UK Government. Smoke in school kitchens often exceeds World Health Organization (WHO)  guidelines, and the cooks who breathe it are mostly women.

Switching fuel changes the arithmetic, but the right transition depends on context. Kasese Secondary School in Uganda cut energy costs by about 62% with improved biomass stoves it learned about from the Inclusive Markets for Energy Efficiency in Uganda (IMEU) programme. Where energy access allows, LPG, electricity, or solar bring far larger savings in cost and emissions. Scaling such savings depends on classification: as an operating cost, clean cooking competes with food; as capital investment, it can draw on energy-sector and, at an early stage, carbon finance. Countries like Rwanda and Zambia are developing their energy transition policies, with the support of development partners, which include strategies for cleaner and more efficient cooking energy in schools and other institutions. 

Where schools still burn wood, parents usually supply it as part of their contribution, one of many community-paid costs left off the books. 

Community ownership brings real benefits, the forum’s community engagement workshop stressed: programme design and meals suited to local context, commitment to education and nutrition, and accountability from those who run programmes. In Kenya, a true-cost analysis found a school meal costs nearly five times the government's allocation, the gap filled by unpaid labour, firewood, and food, much of it from women. 

The question is whether those contributions stay invisible or are accounted for when communities and local authorities take ownership. In Ethiopia, the Building Rural Income through Inclusive Dairy Business Growth (BRIDGE) programme, also funded by the Netherlands, worked with city administrations to budget for school milk. The programme now serves 252,000 learners, communities mobilise 92.3% of its financing through taxes, businesses, and local government, and women make a living as caterers, milk handlers, and suppliers.

Parent-paid models risk excluding the poorest and most vulnerable children. Programmes often serve as safety nets, through national social protection schemes or community solidarity mechanisms. 

Even rising budgets fall behind unless allocations keep pace with food prices. Rwanda's school feeding budget more than doubled between 2021 and 2024 but rests on 2020 food prices, leaving about 40% of the real cost unfunded. 

Closing the gap starts with timely budget adjustments to inflation and true-cost budgeting, as well as broadening the revenue base to finance the budget. Building in innovative financing options from health taxes and debt swaps to carbon credits for clean kitchens means that no single source carries the programme. External funding can then go into what outlasts a project: inclusive procurement mechanisms, clean kitchens, cold chains for perishable foods, and skills, from maintenance to safe food handling. Through the Power for Food Partnership, solar cold rooms and milk chillers are reaching farmers who supply schools. SNV’s approach is market-based, with private companies building and servicing equipment so it lasts.

Investing in the system, from farmers’ livelihoods, employment generation and inclusive procurement to clean kitchens, community ownership, and true-cost budgets, buys a meal that can withstand the next price spike or cuts in external funding.

As the GCNF forum’s communiqué concludes, school meal programmes are “a good investment in the future of their economies as well as their children”.