Advancing SusTainable, Inclusive and Equitable Procurement in Home Grown School Feeding Programs in Kenya (STEP – School Feeding)

About this project

In Kenya, school feeding contributes to enhanced school attendance, improved nutrition and higher test scores among learners. The operational plan for the School Meal Program Scale-up 2024-2030 seeks to roll out universal school meals coverage based on the existing food procurement strategies. However, effective home-grown school feeding is being hampered by marginalization of some regions, exclusion of local farmers from the supply chain and use of imported food ingredients, among other factors. Additionally, the number of learner beneficiaries has substantially declined because of resource limitations leading to inconsistent and insufficient meals in target schools. This project seeks to promote healthy and sustainable diets in schools, increase incomes and strengthen the resilience of local food system stakeholders, particularly women and youth, by designing and piloting scalable, innovative, viable and inclusive procurement systems. The research will emphasize agroecological practices and gender equality responsiveness in production, processing, distribution and consumption linked to the existing home-grown school feeding programs. It will also assess the policy bottlenecks to inform the creation of an enabling policy and regulatory environment. The evidence gathered in the research phase will support co-creation, design and piloting of innovative, viable and inclusive procurement models in two counties and recommendations for scaling of the proposed procurement systems…

Published by

International Development Research Centre · Other public sector

Countries

Kenya

Sectors

Food security policy and administrative management

Focus

Gender equality · Main focusClimate adaptation · Main focus

Published by International Development Research Centre to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), last updated 1 Sept 2026 and imported automatically. IATI identifier: XM-DAC-301-2-110636-001.

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