The Gambia has a targeted school meals programme providing hot mid-morning meals to pre-primary and primary school children in the country’s most vulnerable regions. The programme is managed by the Ministry of Education and supported by the World Food Programme. As of 2022, there are no official nutrition standards that regulate school food in the Gambia.
Food and nutrition education is integrated into the Gambia’s national curriculum through the subjects of Science, Physical Education, and Integrated studies at the primary level and Home Economics, Health Sciences and Agricultural Sciences at the secondary level.
School Food
![School meals](/images/devschoolfoodlibraries/default-album/school-meals.png?sfvrsn=995b1d3d_0)
The Gambia has a school meal programme that targets pre-primary and primary school children (2-13 years) in public schools within the most vulnerable regions and districts of the country. All schools in the targeted geographic areas are eligible for school meals (this includes secondary-level students where a school covers grades 1-9). In addition to school meals, some children bring food from home to school or purchase snacks and meals from food vendors.
The programme is managed by the School Feeding Unit within the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education and supported by the World Food Programme. In 2017, as part of a gradual transition process, the World Food Programme handed over the management of two out of six regions to the government, which in turn created a budget line for the programme. The handover plan for the other four regions has been rescheduled to 2030.
The school meals programme provides daily mid-morning hot meals, five days a week. The meals should cover at least 40 percent of the recommended energy and micronutrient daily intake of children. There are currently two school meal modalities in the Gambia, the choice of which is dependent on the total number of students enrolled in each school. Both modalities are operated by the Government and the World Food Programme in the respective regions that they manage, and both are required to follow the recommended weekly menu and daily rations (see tables 1 and 2).
Community Decentralised Procurement/Cash transfer modality (schools with less than 200 students): where cash is sent to a school’s account, and either the school food management committees or the cooks purchase dry goods, fresh ingredients and fish daily or weekly. Cooks, who receive training from the School Feeding Unit and other partners, are paid monthly in government regions and in-kind in World Food Programme interventions.
Caterer modality (schools with more than 200 students): where caterers, contracted by the Ministry of Education, procure food commodities, prepare and distribute meals to schools. The commodities in the current food basket distributed by the government for this modality comprise cereals (rice), legumes (yellow split peas), oil and iodised salt. The food basket was defined by the National Nutrition Agency, the Ministry of Education and the World Food Programme and is based on WHO/FAO guidelines (2003).The caterers are paid through the Ministry of Finance, although in some instances they may have to pre-finance the meals and are reimbursed afterwards.
The Home-Grown School Feeding programme, which is managed by the School Agriculture and Food Management Unit within the Ministry of Education, links local smallholder farmers to school food procurement and school gardens and is operational in both government-managed regions and a number of schools in World Food Programme intervention areas. Either modality can be linked with the Home-Grown School Feeding initiative.
Every school has a school food management committee, comprising parents, school staff and children, who are responsible for the planning, purchase and acceptability of school meals, along with school principals.
The School Feeding Unit has developed a set of training manuals (HGSMP Caterer Training Manual, Cash Transfer Training Manual) that include guidance on a recommended five-day menu, daily rations per child and the nutritional value of items in the food basket (more details below) that schools should follow in preparing their meals. The manuals are used for training members of the food management committees, caterers and other stakeholders, and include lessons on nutrition, hygiene and food safety.
Table 1: Recommended weekly menu (note: the menu and rations are used as a guide, and may be adapted in different regions as per the availability of commodities and student preferences)
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | |
Food Groups | Benachin or Stew | Plassas or Supaa | Mbahal | Domoda or cherrie | Cassava and beans or beans and bread |
Cereals and tubers | Rice | Rice | Rice | Rice or Maize/millet | Cassava |
Pulses | Beans | Groundnut powder | Groundnut powder, locust beans | Ground paste | Beans |
Animal protein | Fresh fish or meat | Dry fish | Fish or meat | ||
Vegetable oil | Oil | Palm oil | Vegetable oil or palm oil | ||
Vegetable | Bissap (sorrel) Carrot Aubergine (eggplant Onion leaves Cabbage Fresh tomato | Dark green leaves Bitter tomato Spring onion | Spring onion Okra Bitter tomato | Onion Fresh tomato Bitter tomato | Onion Fresh tomato Tomato paste |
Minerals | Iodised salt | Iodised salt | Iodised salt | Iodised salt | Iodised salt |
Table 2: Daily rations per child (based on the menu above)
Commodity | Ration per child per day (grams) | Kcal | Freq/week |
Rice | 100 | 360 | 3 |
Millet/maize | 100 | 378 | 1 |
Cassava/sweet potatoes | 50 | 43 | 1 |
Beans | 30 | 102 | 1 |
Ground nuts/locust beans | 30 | 170 | 3 |
Fish (dried, salted, smoked) | 10 | 27 | 3 |
Oil | 12 | 106 | 2 |
Onion | 10 | 4 | 4 |
Leaves, dark green, e.g. spinach, bissab, krain-crainn, greens, sweet potato leaves | 50 | 12 | 3 |
*Carrots, raw/sweet potatoes | 30 | 12 | 1 |
*Tomatoes (red ripe) | 10 | 2 | 2 |
*To be provided by the community/school garden
School feeding officers are responsible for inspecting schools to assess the nutritional quality of the meals, with support from the School Feeding Unit, school authorities and the food management committees.
A school food policy is under review by the Ministry of Education, subject to funds and other logistics, that will help inform the development of official nutrition guidelines and standards for the school meal programme.
School-Based Food and Nutrition Education
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Food and nutrition education is mainly integrated within the Gambia’s national curriculum through the subjects of Home Economics, Health Sciences, and Agricultural Sciences at the secondary level. At the primary level, food, health, and nutrition-related topics are integrated within subjects such as Science, Physical Education, and Integrated studies.
Topics related to food, health, and nutrition are also integrated into pre-primary education. These issues are integrated into early childhood education as indicated in the Gambia Early Childhood Care and Development curriculum levels 1,2, and 3. Partnering with parents to raise happy children is also a programme in which these issues are dealt with. These two programmes are geared towards the holistic development of the child.
Gambia’s Education Sector Policy (2016-2030) highlights the importance of providing nutrition education to schoolchildren and serves as a guide in integrating nutrition content into various programs.
The Curriculum Framework for Basic and Secondary Education in the Gambia has also made provision for the integration of nutrition issues at all levels of basic and secondary education. The Curriculum Directorate also promotes nutrition education in schools as part of its engagement in coordinating the Child Social and Financial Education programme commonly called the AFLATOUN. This programme promotes nutrition education in schools through activities such as gardening and poultry farming as well as teaching the core elements that provide skills.
The main characteristics of school food and nutrition education are summarized below:
Main targets |
|
Main educators |
|
Integration within the school curriculum | transversally in the school curriculum:
as part of one subject:
as supplementary learning material:
through extracurricular activities in schools:
|
Development
In 2012, the National Nutrition Agency collaborated with the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education and FAO in developing food and nutrition teaching and learning materials for primary schools (grades 2, 4, and 6), following a situation analysis in the West Coast region. The materials were then piloted and later revised in 2016 by the Curriculum Directorate. The current national curriculum is being revised, and there are plans to include nutrition education issues across all grades.
Implementation
Teachers are the main educators for food and nutrition across the different subjects and grades. Examples of learning activities for pre-primary children include naming food items, identifying Gambian foods, and discussing how to prepare a meal. It also includes health and sanitation.
From grades 1 to 4, as part of the subject Integrated Studies, schoolchildren engage with real food items, discuss the nutritional value of common foods, and learn about cooking methods and how to eat a balanced diet.
From grades 7 to 9, Home Economics is an elective subject that includes most of the nutrition and health contents, for example, topics on food safety, budgeting, consumer education, food groups, etc.
From grade 9 onwards, the issues of nutrition are taught in Home Economics as a separate subject and include examples of activities such as planning and preparing meals for household members with different nutritional needs and using local ingredients. Parents are involved in these activities as the main providers of the ingredients; if students prepare the dishes at school, the learning is also shared with their families when meals are taken home.
Agricultural Science has a strong practical component as students learn how to manage school and home gardens and to grow vegetables and fruits.
Overall, the community is generally committed to the nutrition education of children and gets involved in managing the school gardens. Members of mothers’ clubs are key in this, as they are the main group responsible for the gardens when teachers are on holiday. Mothers’ club members are also encouraged to participate in trainings organized by the Ministry of Education and in home-based food education activities.
Monitoring and Evaluation
There is currently no specific assessment of students’ food and nutrition competencies; however, food and nutrition contents are assessed across the grades and within the subjects in which they are integrated, mostly through written exams and practical activities.
Relevant Links
- FAO in the Gambia
- FAOLEX in the Gambia
- The Right to Food in the Gambia
- National Nutrition Policy (2021-2025)
Publications
![](https://www.fao.org/images/devschoolfoodlibraries/africa/decentralized-evaluation-the-gambia.jpg?sfvrsn=fc40bc71_1)
Gambia Decentralized Evaluation: Establishing the Foundation for a Nationally Owned Sustainable School Feeding Programme in the Gambia
The decentralized evaluation has been commissioned by the WFP Gambia Country Office and covers the Development Project 200327 “Establishing the Foundation for a Nationally Owned Sustainable School Feeding Programme in the Gambia”
It was intended for both accountability and learning and focuses on assessing: i) the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability of the project; ii) its results; and iii) the factors explaining the results.
The evaluation, which makes a number of recommendations for the future, was managed by Econometria, with fieldwork taking place in January-February 2018.
Photos
Articles
![School Meals Coalition Logo School Meals Coalition Logo](/images/devschoolfoodlibraries/default-album/smc-logo---blue_transparent.tmb-th600x450.png?Culture=en&sfvrsn=d627916d_4)
France and WFP congratulate Government of Gambia on joining global school meals coalition
01/10/2021
BANJUL – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the French Embassy in The Gambia congratulate the Government of The Gambia for joining the Global School Meals Coalition following the signing of the Declaration of Commitment by H.E the President, Mr. Adama Barrow.
![gam_200803_tnt-cinzia_prencipe_0104](/images/devschoolfoodlibraries/africa/gam_200803_tnt-cinzia_prencipe_0104.tmb-th600x450.jpg?Culture=en&sfvrsn=f24f2bb7_1)
Fourth Africa Day of school feeding celebrated in Gambia
30/04/2019
BANJUL: The Gambia has reiterated its commitment to promote school feeding as a foundation for development and prosperity, during celebrations to mark the fourth edition of the Africa Day of School Feeding held under the patronage of the country’s First Lady, H.E Fatoumata Bah Barrow today.