Since the 2020/2021 school year, Ethiopia and many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa have not only decided to offer general school meals nationwide, at least in the first four classes of primary school, but also give special weight to the local procurement of the required food (“home-grown” in the language of the World Food Programme: WFP).

The importance of school feeding (SF) has increased noticeably in many national social programmes, particularly as a result of COVID-19, as around 50 million pupils on the African continent alone had to interrupt their school attendance for a longer or shorter period of time due to the pandemic. Many of these children were also not allowed to return to school due to pressure from their families. School meals are, therefore, an attempt to make parents and pupils a lucrative offer to reverse this dropout or to motivate extremely poor families to send their children to school at all.

In addition, more recent studies, including of low- and middle-income countries, confirm that regularly offered school meals not only promote school enrolment and attendance, but also have a considerable, positive effect on adolescents’ weight gain. Hence, they can also reduce malnutrition. The studies also confirm positive effects on the learning situation and learning success of the schoolchildren involved in the feeding programmes. School meals, especially in primary schools, are, thus, increasingly proving to be an important and effective contribution to food security and, beyond the narrower field of education, to social security as a whole. The increase in their school attendance and the longer time they stay in school alone also has a positive effect on girls, who are often disadvantaged in education.

The first contributions to school meals in Ethiopia date back to the 1970s, but remained project-based until a few years ago. In addition, apart from the capital Addis Ababa, they were limited to individual schools in areas particularly affected by poverty and/or drought. Since the 2020/2021 school year, the national and state governments have declared school meals to be a general state task and introduced them for all publicly owned primary schools. In Addis Ababa, for example, there is very generous funding from the capital city budget by national standards. Here alone, 700,000 schoolchildren are currently given a hot meal once a day.

In 2023, the public sector provided US$ 85 million for SF throughout the country. However, the individual federal states of Ethiopia contribute to the costs to varying degrees. While the costs in Addis Ababa are borne almost entirely by the state, in Oromia the state is directly involved with funds, but the majority of the costs here are borne by a nationally active aid organisation, Busa Gonofaa, in the form of donations in kind and money, as well as by the schools themselves (e.g. from the income from leased farmland). International donors also contribute to the costs, such as the Global Partnership for Education. It supports numerous schools in several federal states, for example in Sidama, which was included in this study, through the I-NGO Save the Children by supplying basic foodstuffs, such as maize, wheat meal, cooking oil, and iodised salt, as well as technical advice. The World Food Programme also continues to support the national SF programme both financially and by providing technical advice.

With this very strong expansion of SF, Ethiopia, similarly, for example, to Benin in West Africa, is one of the countries that have expanded their SF projects particularly quickly and on a large scale during the COVID-19 pandemic and transformed them into national programmes that cover almost the entire country today. For the first time, the financing of the measures, which was previously more or less left to the international donor community, is being supplemented by greater contributions from the country within the framework of state budgets or, in the Ethiopian context, the budgets of the federal states.

The visit to ten schools as part of this study, including one in Addis Ababa, four in Oromia, and five in Sidama, showed that school meals are actually being provided, albeit at very different levels and still burdened by a lack of important infrastructure. Drinking water is difficult to obtain in many parts of Ethiopia, and many schools only have access to this basic requirement, which is essential for school meals, through water vendors. Funding is also only secured for the absolute basic foodstuffs. Everything that goes beyond the few basic components of school meals mentioned must be procured by the schools or parent organisations, to a lesser extent from school gardens, otherwise from local retailers, and is, therefore, limited to herbs, spices, onions, garlic, and perhaps a few beans. A large part of the school budget also has to be used to buy firewood, although some schools have started to set up their own small firewood plantations.

It is, therefore, important to introduce improved, i.e. energy-saving cookers, for which there are already a number of contributions from the German Technical Cooperation. However, the cooks must be persuaded to do the extra work that they see as a result. Another fundamental problem with SF in Ethiopia (similar to other countries in our study) is the very poor, in some cases only symbolic pay of the “voluntary” cooks. By working up to eight hours a day for almost no pay, they hardly have time to earn money for their families. Accordingly, swift action must be taken here and a solution for reasonable pay must be found.

Nevertheless, the effects of SF to date have been reported as very positive. In particular, school attendance by both boys and girls has increased significantly and, in contrast to the past, the number of school dropouts has fallen to almost zero. Parents are also relieved because, regardless of their material situation at home, they can now be sure that their (school) children will get a warm meal once a day during the week.

The study was conducted between February and May 2023 by two INEF freelancers, Prof. Dr Frank Bliss (development anthropologist and team leader) and Tamene Hailegiorgis Gutema (freelance consultant), on the basis of secondary analyses, digital surveys, and a three-week on-site mission in March–April. The interim results were discussed with the Director of the Directorate of the Ministry of Education in Addis Ababa, which was set up specifically for SF in Ethiopia in 2022, during the on-site study in April 2023.