School food politics in Africa : Two Nigerian school feeding programs in comparative perspective
Abstract
- Abstract
- Free school meals can be a transformative social policy instrument, especially in the Global South. Domestically sourced school feeding programs can improve children’s food security, augment household incomes, incentivize school attendance, and support local agricultural production. Scholars have so far paid only limited attention to the political causes and processes behind school feeding programs. To contribute to a better understanding of school food politics in Africa, we study the development of two national school feeding programs in Nigeria. We reconstruct and compare the development of the Obasanjo administration’s Home-Grown School Feeding and Health Programme, implemented from 2005 to 2008, and the Buhari administration’s National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, implemented from 2016 to 2023. We argue that the relatively more successful implementation of the Buhari-era program was the result of a presidential ideology that was more supportive of social policy expansion, a policy design that was more conducive to state-level program implementation, and supportive technical assistance from the London-based Partnership for Child Development.
Subjects
People & roles
Origins & context
- Title
- School food politics in Africa : Two Nigerian school feeding programs in comparative perspective
- Publication type
- Article
- Language
- English
- Journal
- Global Social Policy
- Year
- 2025
- volume
- 25
- issue
- 3
- Page start
- 492
- Page end
- 511
- Status
- Peer reviewed
- Relation
- Open Access Publizieren
Identifiers & sources
- ISSN
- 1741-2803
Full text
- Full text
- gsp https://doi.org/10.1177/14680181251387293 Global Social Policy 2025, Vol. 25(3) 492–511 © The Author(s) 2025 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/14680181251387293 journals.sagepub.com/home/gsp School food politics in Africa: Two Nigerian school feeding programs in comparative perspective Tim Dorlach1 , Ugbedeojo Sule1 and Nathaniel Umukoro2 Abstract Free school meals can be a transformative social policy instrument, especially in the Global South. Domestically sourced school feeding programs can improve children’s food security, augment household incomes, incentivize school attendance, and support local agricultural production. Scholars have so far paid only limited attention to the political causes and processes behind school feeding programs. To contribute to a better understanding of school food politics in Africa, we study the development of two national school feeding programs in Nigeria. We reconstruct and compare the development of the Obasanjo administration’s Home-Grown School Feeding and Health Programme, implemented from 2005 to 2008, and the Buhari administration’s National Home- Grown School Feeding Programme, implemented from 2016 to 2023. We argue that the relatively more successful implementation of the Buhari-era program was the result of a presidential ideology that was more supportive of social policy expansion, a policy design that was more conducive to state-level program implementation, and supportive technical assistance from the London-based Partnership for Child Development. Keywords Federalism, Nigeria, policy design, presidential ideology, school feeding, school food politics, technical assistance 1University of Bayreuth, Germany 2Western Delta University, Nigeria Corresponding author: Tim Dorlach, University of Bayreuth, Fritz-Hornschuch-Straße 13, 95326 Kulmbach, Germany. Email: tim.dorlach@uni-bayreuth.de 1387293 GSP0010.1177/14680181251387293Global Social PolicyDorlach et al.… Read the full text about 9,975 words
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