Unga crisis' strangehold on schools

To dodge the strict rationing, many private school owners are spending valuable hours every day hopping from one supermarket to the next to shop for the elusive flour currently retailing at Sh90 per 2kg packet.

Others have been forced to write letters and produce documents to millers to be allowed to purchase more than one bale.

School meals initiatives, which encourage school enrollment, retention and increase completion rates in both public and private schools, largely depend on local farmers and suppliers for their sustainability.

Data from the latest Economic Survey shows that in 2016, there were a total of 16,073 private pre-primary schools, 10,263 private primary schools and 1,350 private secondary schools. Maize is an essential staple food in most of the feeding programmes in these schools. It is cooked with beans (githeri) or milled to produce flour for preparing ugali and porridge.

“When you explain to supermarkets that you are buying unga (flour) for a school with over 600 children, they say they cannot afford to feed an institution because they have limited stock for their customers,” laments Mr Nehemiah Ndeta, the founder and director of Emukhunzulu Education Centre based off Kakamega County.

“Millers are now requiring institutions to have an account with them for a steady supply of unga, but that locks some of us out because we live from hand to mouth and budget for meals when we get the money.”

Ndeta, who is also the founder and director of Kwa Watoto Centre and School and St Mathew Secondary School both situated in Nairobi, feeds a total of 1,600 leaners every day through donor support.

Millers intervention

“I had to write a letter to United Millers in Kisumu to justify why I should be given more than one maize flour bale. After queueing for over three hours with my documents, they eventually gave me 20 bales. The schools will feed properly at least for the next few days.”

All Kenyan children have a right to basic education that is free and compulsory, and to basic nutrition, heath care and shelter as enshrined in Article 53(1) of the Constitution of Kenya (2010). World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 66 million primary school-age children attend classes hungry across the developing world, with 23 million in Africa alone, which greatly impacts their ability to learn. According to the UN agency, US$3.2 billion is needed every year to reach all hungry school-age children.

The biting maize shortage coupled with high food prices have seen many privately-owned schools, including Emukhunzulu, tweak their menu to keep up with the current inflation rate of 11.70 per cent, which according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, it’s the highest since May 2012.

“Children here have not eaten githeri for so long; we are feeding them on rice and beans. Unfortunately, with unga being inadequate, the prices of the alternatives like rice and beans have also gone up significantly.”

Some of the private schools this writer visited had recently doubled the cost of meals while others made school feeding programme mandatory to take advantage of quantity discount from their local suppliers.

“Before the unga crisis, we were buying a 50kg maize flour sack at Sh1,870 at a cereal store next to the school. The same sack is now going for Sh3, 000 and is hardly available in local stores. The price of a 90kg sack of maize has hiked from Sh2,500 to Sh4,900,” explains Jakson Siva of Shiloh Community Centre in Soweto Slum, Nairobi.

“The school director summoned parents and guardians of all 150 students early last month to explain to them why the school had to increase the daily cost of meals from Sh20 to Sh40 per child.”

According to Siva, milling maize is not an option for most schools operating on a tight feeding budget because it costs more in the long run compared to buying the subsidized flour. “When you factor in the Sh10 per kg milling cost, a 2kg unga will cost you Sh128.”

Public schools safe

Unlike private schools, public schools enjoy more established school feeding models that date back more than three decades. In 1980, the government of Kenya entered into a school feeding partnership with WFP targeting 220,000 primary school children.

By 2007, school feeding programmes were providing meals to more than 1.2 million school children in over 3,800 primary schools, thanks to the introduction of Free Primary Education in January 2003 that led to massive school enrollment.

Today, more than 1.5 million school children enjoy hot meals in different schools across the country.

Local farmers supply foodstuff to public schools on termly basis through a competitive procurement process. Other public schools produce food from their school gardens to supplement the school meals.

World Food Programme last month announced that it will stop funding the school feeding programme in the next two years, handing over the mantle to the Government of Kenya.

The process of transitioning the WFP’s feeding programme to government ownership started in 2009 through the introduction of the Home Grown School Meals programme under the Education ministry.