Burundi hands school dinners to the villages that cook them

In Burundi, the people who know what a school lunch needs are increasingly the people buying it. Under the national Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, local communes are taking over the planning, purchasing and monitoring of school meals — buying from local farming cooperatives instead of a distant central supplier. The World Food Programme is backing the shift, which this school year targets 846,422 children in 982 schools, with multi-sectoral committees set up in 27 communes to watch over the canteens. The evidence says local works better: schools using the decentralised model serve meals on 13 days a month instead of 7.4, at $40.61 per child a year instead of $46.85. The government's goal is school feeding for every preschool and primary child — nearly 2.8 million — by 2032.

SDG 2 · Zero hunger — Mechanism: institutional program