Promoting new learning channels through digital innovation
Opinion piece by Pamela Pozarny, Senior Rural Sociologist, FAO Investment Centre (CFI) and Viviana Sacco, Programme Manager, Procasur (Procasur)
Lockdowns and other restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic caused school closures in 42 countries across Africa in 2020, putting 50 million children at risk of food insecurity. Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programmes, one of the most promising initiatives for food security in the African continent of the last ten years, fed 65.4 million children across the continent in 2019 alone.
The HGSF model is a win-win intervention that provides schoolchildren with safe, diverse and nutritious food sourced locally from smallholders while generating stable demand for local food commodities. The scheme strengthens small-scale producers’ access to steady and formal markets, encouraging inclusive and sustainable local food systems and community cohesion.
The abrupt interruption of these programmes resulted in a lack of education and secure food for millions of children, and the loss of sustainable markets for small-scale producers, threatening local networks of food production and consumption.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Procasur, a global NGO specialized in harvesting and scaling up home-grown innovations to end rural poverty, joined efforts to expose African government officials and decision-makers to local experiences of Home-Grown School Feeding implemented in rural areas during COVID-19.
In early December 2020, the partnership piloted the Learning Route, Successful practices, tools, and mechanisms to design, implement and monitor Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programmes in Africa, combining virtual platforms and hands-on field learning.
Twenty-two government officials and decision-makers in total attended this learning journey in Kenya. Seven were Kenyan government officials, who travelled Busia and Siaya counties to meet and share directly with local stakeholders. At the same time, fifteen others from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Lesotho, Rwanda and Uganda joined the learning experience via a combination of satellite links and e-learning platforms enabling their real-time virtual participation, including interaction with Kenya’s BFN project and the Nyamninia Primary School.
Through this platform, various stakeholders shared their practical knowledge and experience on facilitating public procurement of school meals by smallholder farmers and strengthening local production of nutritious and indigenous varieties of local crops.
Throughout the learning journey, participants reflected on the promising features and scale-up of innovative field solutions they saw to strengthen small-scale producers’ linkages with school procurement. “It was an exciting and true learning journey,” said Salama Gata Sylvia, Programme Manager at Rwanda’s Ministry of Agriculture.
“Personally, the virtual Learning Route has inspired in me the idea that improvement is possible. HGSF implementation to directly link farmers to caterers and quantify outputs has not yet been achieved in our country. This Kenyan example convinces me to push more for success,” said Offei Seth, an agriculture expert at Ghana’s Ministry of Agriculture.
Sharing knowledge and cooperation through digital innovation
In the context of the global pandemic, this initiative has been an opportunity to innovate and unlock the potential of interregional dialogue through technology and effective coordination among partners. Even under severe travel restrictions, digital innovation has provided a medium for interaction and sharing among African government officials, along with local actors, to improve HGSF programmes in their respective contexts.
Participants learned the importance of strengthening collaboration between communities, schools and local producers to ensure nutritious meals – all without leaving their homes. They are now eager to develop school gardens and innovative ‘green classes’ to promote local production further.
This pilot experience is an example of how knowledge-sharing and South-South cooperation through digital innovations can be conducted, not only in a pandemic context but beyond. It demonstrates approaches to promote practical and experiential learning from the field with the direct involvement of local actors through new learning channels, providing high outreach and scale-up potential. Food security and ensuring healthy diets cannot wait, least of all for children.
