“If a child is hungry, they lose a term of learning annually”: F4E’s Wawira Njiru on Why School Feeding Matters
For millions of children across Africa, whether they can learn depends on whether they've eaten. That's the reality Food4Education Founder and CEO Wawira Njiru discussed during a recent visit to the organization's Giga Kitchen with BBC Focus on Africa's Waihiga Mwaura.
Walking through the facility where F4E prepares meals for over 600,000 children daily across 13 Kenyan counties, Wawira explained why a school meal is more than just food.
“A child’s body is growing and their brain is developing,” she said. “If they don’t get the right nutrition, they’ve already started growth malnourished and they can’t even concentrate.”
The numbers are stark. In schools without feeding programs, children regularly miss the last three to four hours of class—the entire afternoon session.
“That equates to about a term of learning lost every year,” Wawira noted.
A Blueprint for Scale
F4E treats school feeding as both a social mission and a product that needs financial discipline.
“When we define what we do, we talk about our cost per meal,” Wawira explained. “For us, a plate of food is product.”
That clarity allows F4E to remain transparent with parents, donors, and government partners about who covers what portion of each meal’s cost—and makes the model easier to replicate.
The organization is already in talks with Zambia, where the government has ambitious plans for nationwide school feeding coverage.
The Challenge Ahead
Despite growing momentum—about 75% of African countries now allocate budgets for school feeding—penetration across the continent sits at just 19%.
“That still leaves about 80% of children unreached,” Wawira said.
Her message to partners and policymakers is simple: “School meals are not charity. They are a strategy that keeps children in class and learning.”
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