The spirit of Ubuntu lives in a quiet town off the Namib Desert
In Namibia, daily school meals are a strong incentive for children to maintain school attendance
Luise Shikongo
Diaz Primary School, situated southwest of Namibia, in the coastal town of Lüderitz, is one of the 1,532 schools in the country offering meals to learners from food insecure households. A total of 485 learners (264 boys and 221 girl) eagerly attend school knowing they will receive a warm meal- often their only meal for the day.
Mrs Clara Boer, a Life Skills teacher at the school, has been coordinating the National School Feeding Programme (NSFP) for 21 years. “Since I started coordinating the programme, I have noticed that a child who receives nutritious meals consistently has better grade output than a child considered malnourished.”
The programme, led by local government, delivers several benefits to vulnerable children besides curbing hunger. In addition, good nutrition enhances children’s interest in school activities, class participation, retention of information, overall school enrolment and attendance.
Diaz Primary School is also focused on improving nutrition intake to reduce opportunistic infections and illnesses for its lower and upper primary school learners. The school endeavours to provide a balanced diet supported by the Ministry of Education Arts and Culture (MoEAC) in the form of 125 bags of 12,5kg maize blend per semester. The initiative also thrives with sponsorship from local companies who donate fish to the school on a weekly basis. In addition, the school has benefited from a sponsored oven and weekly delivery of flour resulting in fresh baked bread for the learners twice a week.
Despite efforts made by the school to diversify its school meals with vegetables and proteins (fish and lentils), the NSFP remains the learner’s main source of food security. Poor diets continue to demand enhanced nutrition to improve the health and cognitive development of learners.
“Local companies make financial donations to the school on a regular basis to support the purchase of cooking oil, sugar and extra maize meal aimed to increase school meals and portions,” said Mrs Boer. “Teachers are sensitised against suspending or disciplining learners without finding the root cause as zero or limited food intake adversely impacts a child’s behaviour.”
During the COVID-19 national lockdown, schools were forced to close for the first quarter of 2021, subsequently halting school meals. The school distributed the leftover maize bags among the learners as take-home rations.
Phillipus Mulamba, a 13-year-old Grade seven learner only received one meal at home during the lockdown period. His mother, Mrs Vicky Ipinge has five children and was unable to provide additional meals due to the financial strain she experienced. The family all tested positive for COVID-19 and were advised to eat healthy food with the supplements provided by the state hospital.
Lüderitz as a harbour town and transit route for truck drivers crossing the border became a transmission channel for the virus. However, since the implementation of Covid-19 testing facilities by Des Jo, a local private medical centre, at the harbour and borders, cases were immediately identified and appropriately managed. The testing centres provided parents with the required COVID-19 results after recovery to return to their workplace, to this end enabling continued economic prosperity in the household and the safe return of children to school, consequently eluding delayed or reduced participation in the NSFP and school absenteeism.
Since implementation of the testing centre and dissemination of information by health officials in the harbour town, learners, like Phillipus, have flocked back to school. With an influx of tourists and business activities resuming, the local economy is thriving once again with the re-employment of local ordinary people, like Mrs Ipinge.
Read about WFP’s work in Namibia
