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Sao Tome and Principe

WFP Sao Tome and Principe Country Brief, December 2016

Attachments

Highlights

  • The school meals programme managed by the Government continues to face a critical funding gaps. Since the beginning of the school year in September, no meal has been served in the school canteens.
  • A Budget Revision extending the current project for one year was approved by the Regional Bureau.

WFP Assistance

Starting in 2015/2016, the school meals programme component of the current development project in Sao Tome and Principe to provide daily meals to all public kindergartens, primary and secondary schools is being managed by the Government. However the handover process continues to face a critical funding gaps.

The capacity development and augmentation component which focuses on providing technical assistance to the Coordination Unit of the PNASE (National School Feeding and Health Programme) by gradually transferring the responsibility of providing daily hot meals to schoolchildren to the Government and increasing institutional and human capital development in support of the Government in managing a school meals programme on its own.

The current Development project will end in December.

Following the recommendations of the SABER exercise conducted in October 2016 and the decentralized evaluations done in 2015, a Budget Revision for an extension in time of the current project was approved by the Regional Bureau. With that, the country office expects to start home-grown school feeding activities as a social safety net project.

Other forms of support can be quite interesting as a "linkage" of school feeding with local agriculture in the context of social protection or the social safety nets project of the Government.

The Budget Revision is expected to strongly contribute to Strategic Objective 4 “Reduce undernutrition and break the cycle of hunger”, and to the objectives of the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) 2017-2021 and the Government’s Poverty Reduction Policy Strategy which supports the Government's efforts to increase access to basic education through food and nutrition assistance.

At government and schools levels WFP continuously advocates for gender equality and indicators suggest a strong improvement in the area during the current Development project (2012-2016).