Zambia and Food4Education hatch four-year partnership to strengthen and scale national school feeding systems
The new partnership adapts proven blueprint to unlock long-term returns across agriculture, livelihoods, and human capital.
Black News 
The Ministry of Education in Zambia and Food4Education have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to strengthen Zambia’s school feeding programme,
The program currently reaches 4.6 million children across 8,193 schools, and support the government’s ambition to scale to 5.6 million by the end of 2026.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) establishes a long-term technical cooperation framework through which Food4Education will support the Ministry of Education across five priority areas: policy and institutional coordination; programme design and operational systems; data, digitalization and innovation; budgeting, financing and resource utilization; and infrastructure and equipment.
Together, this work serves Zambia’s commitment to build a government-led school feeding system that strengthens learning, improves nutrition, supports local agriculture and creates long-term economic opportunity.
“Universal school feeding is an investment in our children’s futures and our nation’s economic growth. This partnership with Food4Education helps us strengthen the systems that turn this investment into long-term returns for Zambia,” said Dr. Kelvin Mambwe, the Zambian Permanent Secretary of Education Services.
Africa loses up to 16.5 percent of GDP annually to childhood hunger, yet school feeding can generate up to US$20 in returns for every US$1 invested.
With two-thirds of African governments now carrying dedicated budget lines for school feeding, the question is no longer whether to invest.
It is how to design and deliver at scale.
A proven blueprint, adapted for local contexts, economies and communities, is what turns commitment into delivery.
“Zambia is doing something that the continent needs to see. It is putting its own treasury and the weight of several ministries behind its own children, building school feeding as economic infrastructure that strengthens agriculture, creates dignified livelihoods, builds human capital, and grows the economy,”
Wawira Njiru, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Food4Education.
“Food4Education is here to support what Zambia’s leadership has already started, and to help accelerate the school feeding economy across Africa,” added Wawira Njiru.
Done well, government-led school feeding creates value far beyond the classroom.
It connects smallholder farmers to stable markets, creates dignified livelihoods across the food value chain particularly for women and youth, strengthens local food systems, and builds digital public infrastructure.
This partnership’s ambition is to demonstrate what it looks like for African governments to build, finance, and deliver public systems that endure.
Food4Education is a uniquely African solution to a global problem, fit for any local context.
The not-for-profit social enterprise brings 14 years of experience building government-aligned school feeding systems in Kenya, where it has delivered over 200 million meals and sources 80 percent of food locally from thousands of smallholder farmers, and operates Tap2Eat, F4E’s proprietary digital operating system for school feeding, processing millions of transactions annually.
Invited by the Government of Zambia to support this next phase of work, F4E’s role is technical: helping the government strengthen the delivery systems that make universal school feeding sustainable at scale.
The Free Education Policy implemented in 2022 brought 2 million additional learners into the system, making the scale of delivery a central national priority.
The partnership builds on Zambia’s established school feeding ecosystem.
F4E’s contribution complements the ongoing efforts of the existing partners, with the government continuing to lead delivery.
F4E’s role does not involve programme implementation.
The agreement further reinforces Zambia’s growing leadership in school feeding across Africa as the country prepares to host the Global Child Nutrition Forum (GCNF) in November 2026, the world’s premier gathering on school feeding, bringing together governments, development partners and practitioners from across the continent and beyond.
The Ministry of Education of Zambia is the government ministry responsible for developing, regulating, and delivering education services across the country. It oversees education from early childhood through university level.
About Food4Education
From their statement, the Food4Education exists so that no child ever has to learn while hungry.
Since 2012, the organization has worked alongside families, schools, smallholder farmers, and governments at every level across Kenya to design and deliver school feeding served with dignity and operated with excellence.
Powered by their digital backbone, Tap2Eat, a distributed kitchen network, and a dedicated team of 5,500 and counting, the outfit has served more than 200 million meals from farm to spoon.
