2024-03-26 13:32:22
The level of coverage in school canteens has improved in Benin. The country reached a rate of 75% in 2023 according to a report drawn up on March 21, 2024.
From 31% in 2016 to more than 60% in 2022, the coverage rate of public primary schools in school canteens is estimated at 75% in 2023. This level of evolution of the system was made public on Thursday March 21, 2024 in the municipality of Abomey-Calavi during the celebration of African School Feeding Day.
The school feeding program consists of providing one hot meal per day to learners in public establishments. “More than one million three hundred thousand schoolchildren, 45% of whom are girls, are beneficiaries (…), or more than 10% of the population of Benin”, inform the government.
By 2026, a score of 100% should be achieved. The Beninese government, with technical support from the World Food Program (WFP), aims to provide all public primary schools with school canteens by this deadline.
Champion of school canteens
The school feeding program has been implemented in Benin since the 2000s, but with a low national coverage rate. Its revitalization in 2013 through the creation of a School Food Directorate attached to the Ministry of National Education, without financial resources, had no greater impact. The results of the government program completed in 2015 present an unsatisfactory result.
In 2016, the school canteen program in Beninese public schools was relaunched. It will be strengthened in 2018 thanks to the National Integrated School Feeding Program (PNASI) by taking into account public primary schools previously without a school canteen.
In June 2022, the country was named world champion of school canteens by the WFP. The government then decided to perpetuate the school feeding system with the definition of a legal framework in 2023.
“The budget devoted to school canteens increased from 1.5 billion in 2016 to 48.7 billion CFA Francs in 2022”declared the executive in 2022. To achieve 100% coverage by 2026, the planned financial resources amount to the sum of 153,850,098,105 FCFA, “i.e. 15,623,210,000 FCFA to ensure the extension of the program during the 2021-2022 school year; 31,241,510,000 FCFA for 2022-2023 then 29,010,000,000 FCFA for each of the following three years”.
#School #canteens #mark #crossed #Benin