The Cabinet Secretary (CS) for Education Ezekiel Machogu who was recently sworn into office and has now seemingly performed his first task in office by overseeing around ten (10) lories leave to deliver food to Arid and Semi-Arid Areas (ASAL).
The ASAL areas are the counties of Tana River, Garissa, Wajir, Mandera, Turkana, Samburu, Isiolo and Marsabit.
The supplied food is intended to last for a month and is meant to address historical primary school absenteeism among the communities that have been seriously affected by drought.
Free meals have been suggested as the best bait to attract school-going children back to schools in areas that have been hit hard by drought. The provision of daily meals relieves parents and guardians from the struggle of looking for food for their children. At times parents are not able to even fend for themselves, leave alone fend for their children.
At the same time, CS Machogu launched a handbook at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) called ‘History of Kenya’s School meal’.
The book was facilitated by various donors and other organizations and reveals the Kenyan experience in the provision of school meals to thousands of learners whose access to education was created possible through government school meal programmes in the ASAL regions.
Among the contributors to the project were Togo Consul Devotsu Koni, Deputy Executive Director for Programme and Policy Development at World Food Programme Valerie and Guarnieri and Daniel Whitley and the administrator of foreign agriculture service U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).