With one of the highest urbanization rates in the world, the population of Uganda’s slums are extremely likely to increase in the near future. This, coupled with growing fears over climate change and food security, is likely to exacerbate many existing struggles slum inhabitants face relating to health, nutrition and education. One intervention which aims to target these issues are school feeding programs (SFPs) which are becoming more popular in both the developed and developing world. It was found that these programs can provide particularly strong benefits in slum communities, yet eradicating these struggles entirely requires a more holistic approach.

Key Findings

• SFPs have great potential to benefit slum communities due to high population density which allows for increased effectiveness of interventions, otherwise known as ‘neighborhood effects’.

• Benefits are more strongly realized in younger children and those who attend regularly.

• SFPs act as a safety net for vulnerable families and help to prevent children from engaging in damaging behaviors at a young age, such as alcohol, drug abuse or even sexual activities.

• There are a number of barriers in achieving greater success, most notably the issue of limited resources and a potential inability to sustain long-term benefits in older children.

• SFPs target the symptom rather than the source of poverty and therefore the ultimate goal should focus on the development of the country as a whole.

Background to the Issues

Currently, 54% of Uganda’s population live in slums which are among the most deprived in the world, lacking adequate infrastructure, sanitation or access to healthcare and education. One of the most pressing issues for these communities is that of food insecurity. Food security is where ‘all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Therefore, food insecurity occurs when there is an absence of this. School feeding programs (SFPs) aim to address some of these issues and are explicitly advocated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as being an appropriate strategy to achieve Goal: End poverty in all its forms everywhere. SFPs aim to enhance concentration, increase attendance and improve nutritional status by providing school children with a meal or snack during the day. Studies which investigate the impacts of these programs in urban slum communities are lacking, yet could potentially provide an ideal setting for further expansion of such programs in the future.

Barriers

Despite a number of positive impacts, there are a few apparent limitations of this program which are likely to be common across similar contexts. Firstly, limited resources pose a threat to expanding or even maintaining existing benefits. Being limited to a single classroom easily leads to overcrowding which does not support an effective learning environment. Similarly, as more children attend, portion sizes are reduced in order to spread over a larger number, but this is likely to diminish the physical and nutritional gains for these children. These issues are perhaps more apparent for older children who are largely outnumbered in the classroom and fail to receive larger, targeted portion sizes compared to much younger participants. In addition, children in slums have to mature a lot younger than most and therefore, they may begin engaging in income generating activities at a younger age and are unable to continue attending the program. Lastly, serving the food at the end of the day in this program is somewhat untypical of many other SFPs, which serve food either at breakfast or lunch in order to benefit children’s cognitive function during lessons6. Serving food later allows more children who attend formal schooling to receive food, but this may be at the detriment to educational attainment.

Conclusion

Overall, these results imply that SFPs can provide a wealth of benefits in slum communities and have strong potential to be replicated across similar contexts. However, the need for a holistic approach is still very evident and therefore SFPs in these settings can be greatly strengthened through the use of complementary programs. In addition, factors such as household size, composition, age and attendance rate may also influence the impacts of the program on individuals. More quantitative research which investigates the nutritional and educational impacts of SFPs on slum communities would be extremely beneficial in strengthening the findings outlined in this study.