First Lady Rachel Ruto has called for stronger global partnerships to help Kenya expand school meals to 10 million learners by 2030, saying a nutritious meal can strengthen education, improve farmers’ incomes, advance climate action and invest in the country’s future.
Speaking during a meeting with the World Food Programme (WFP) and The Rockefeller Foundation in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Mrs Ruto said Kenya had expanded school meals coverage from 1.8 million learners in 2023 to about 2.6 million.
“Feeding a child is not an act of charity; it is an investment in that child’s potential and in our country’s future,” she said.
The First Lady said Kenya’s school meals programme was the product of a long national journey, from the Maziwa ya Nyayo initiative to the country’s current nationally owned school meals programme.
She noted that WFP had supported Kenya’s school feeding programme before the Government assumed full ownership, with WFP now providing technical support to strengthen and expand the programme.
Mrs Ruto said the Government was deepening the programme through initiatives such as the Mama Kitchen Garden Initiative and the National School Milk Programme, linking nutrition with local food production and livelihoods.
She cited Kachororoni Primary School in Ganze, Kilifi County, where school gardens are helping supplement meals, equip learners with practical food-growing skills and build resilience in a community affected by drought and food insecurity.
The school gardens initiative is being rolled out across all 47 counties, while the National School Milk Programme is intended to improve children’s nutrition while creating a stable market for smallholder dairy farmers.
The First Lady also highlighted ongoing nutrition interventions in counties including Migori, Nakuru, Kilifi, Baringo and Makueni, with expansion planned in Uasin Gishu, Bomet, Kericho, Mombasa and Trans Nzoia.
Kenya joined the Global School Meals Coalition at its launch in 2021. In October 2024, the Ministry of Education launched the National School Meals Coalition and an operational plan to scale up the national programme towards universal coverage by 2030. The plan targets an increase from 1.9 million learners in 2023 to more than 10 million by 2030.
The programme is also expected to receive further legal backing through the proposed School Feeding Bill currently before Parliament.
Mrs Ruto said the expansion was particularly urgent in arid and semi-arid counties, where food insecurity, drought and the cost of preparing meals remain major barriers to learning.
She said the National Council for Nomadic Education in Kenya’s fortified porridge programme was supporting 2.65 million learners in arid counties, while Nairobi County’s Dishi na County programme was providing hot meals to more than 400,000 learners daily.
However, she noted that financing remained a major challenge, with the national school meals programme facing a Sh6.6 billion funding shortfall.
“A school meal is never only a meal,” Mrs Ruto said. “It is predictable demand for the farmer who grows it, and an investment in the resilience of the community that produces it.”
She said Kenya was also working to make school feeding more climate-friendly, noting that many schools continue to rely on wood biomass for cooking.
Mrs Ruto said clean cooking must therefore be an integral part of the school meals agenda, adding that Kenya was developing an investment-ready clean-cooking pipeline and seeking partnerships to demonstrate how clean cooking can deliver both climate and development benefits.
She further urged international partners to work with Kenya to demonstrate how school meals can simultaneously address nutrition, agriculture, environmental conservation and community resilience.
“A school meal can nourish a child, sustain a farmer, protect a forest and strengthen a nation,” she said.
“The complexity belongs to us; the simplicity of a nutritious meal must belong to every child. A plate of food is power in a child’s hand.”she added.
