The National Examination and School Inspection Authority (NESA) has recently announced that the academic year 2024/2025 will begin on September 9. On a similar note, the Ministry of Education also called Rwandans living home and abroad to contribute the smallest amount of money they can offer purposely to support the school feeding program.

The supplementary program to the already existing School Feeding initiative has been launched in a timely manner at the time when the students are going back to school for the academic year 2024/2025.

The key stakeholders in these programs include the Ministry of Education in partnership with Mobile Money Rwanda and Umwalimu SACCO committing to support Dusangire Lunch.

According to the Ministry of Education, the national feeding programs have shown remarkable results not only in meeting children’s nutritional needs but also in improving education enrollments, retention and performance. Since its expansion across the country in 2021. Drop rates decreased by 4%.

Currently, the Government covers 90% of the school feeding program cost per child with parents contributing to approximately 1000Rwf per trimester. The Dusangire Lunch campaign

Statistics show that over 3.9 students in 4,500 schools’ benefits from the feeding programs.

During the recently concluded Africa Food Systems Forum (AFS Forum) that took place from September 2 to September 6, the Prime Minister Edouard Ngirente and Roy Steiner, the Senior Vice President of the Food Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation hold a discussion on ways to enhance Rwanda’s school feeding programme.

Dr. Roy Steiner, Senior Vice President for the Food Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation lauded the feeding program noting; “I had a wonderful meeting with the Prime Minister, where we discussed the shift from refined grains to whole grains. For schoolchildren, fortified whole grains are significantly more nutritious, and they help conserve food. When you refine grains, you lose 20 to 30 percent of the volume and about 90 percent of the nutrition.”

To contribute to ‘Dusangire Lunch’ dial *182*3*10# and follow the prompts.