On May 28th, 2025, the National Program Manager (NPM) of Nigeria’s National Home-Grown School Feeding Program (NHGSFP), Princess Aderemi Adebowale, had a roundtable discussion with the leadership of smallholder farmers and commodity associations’ chairmen to discuss the food value chain of the school feeding program and chart a roadmap for its smooth implementation. As a key stakeholder for the NHGSFP, Impacter Solutions had the privilege of contributing to the discussion to answer the question, “How do we ensure that every Nigerian child receives a nutritious, affordable, and sustainable school meal?”
The answer lies in smarter food profiling, localized solutions, and evidence-based design. Our presentation focused on four critical themes: nutrient quality, food availability, affordability, and sustainability, with actionable strategies for transforming school meals from subsistence support and a social protection program to a cornerstone of national development.
Raising the nutritional quality of school meals to address child malnutrition is crucial. One in every three Nigerian children is malnourished. Healthier meals directly boost concentration, learning outcomes, and long-term cognitive development. Hence, the nutrient quality of school meals is not a luxury; it’s a national investment. The NHGSFP offers an unparalleled opportunity to reverse this statistic by making every school meal count. To achieve this, menus must move beyond caloric sufficiency and incorporate dietary diversity, nutrient density, and a variety of food groups. School meals should deliver at least one-third of a child’s daily energy needs while addressing micronutrient gaps, particularly in iron, zinc, vitamin A, and protein.
To enhance the nutrient quality, school meals should be complemented with animal proteins and legumes for protein quality, promote the use of local, nutrient-rich foods like leafy greens, beans, moringa, and fortified staples, prohibit sweetened drinks and ultra-processed foods in school menus, and incorporate nutrition surveillance to track deficiencies and adapt menus accordingly.
Food Availability and Affordability: Leveraging Local Systems for Consistent Supply
Availability of food varies across Nigeria’s geopolitical zones due to seasonality, climate, and market access. These variabilities, if left unaddressed, can compromise meal quality and consistency. No schoolchild should miss a meal due to food availability shocks. A resilient food supply system is required. This can be achieved through mapping seasonal food calendars across states, supporting capacity building for aggregators and local farmers, advocating for investments in storage, cold chain, and transport infrastructure, and promoting menu flexibility to integrate seasonal substitutions.
Additionally, there is a need to emphasize community-based procurement guided by a national public food procurement policy framework that promotes a healthy diet and climate-smart food systems. Menu planning must be localized and seasonal, sourcing from smallholder farmers, cooperatives, and aggregators who understand the terrain and are invested in local supply chains.
Affordability entails designing nutritious meals within budget realities. We can achieve cost-efficiency without compromising nutrient quality if we put data and local intelligence at the center of decision-making. In the Nigerian economy, where food inflation and price volatility persist, balancing affordability with nutritional adequacy remains an ongoing challenge year after year. The average cost of school meals must remain viable without sacrificing quality.
This requires last-mile, community-level costing models that account for regional food prices. These menu simulation tools enable cost-nutrition trade-off analysis and real-time food price tracking dashboards for adaptive procurement planning, allowing for the substitution of expensive protein sources with equally nutritious and cost-effective alternatives, such as legumes and fortified foods. Additionally, cooks and caterers require ongoing training to understand smart menu substitutions while ensuring that nutrition is not compromised, even when certain ingredients are unavailable.
Sustainability: Driving Local Solutions for Nutrition and Food Systems
By institutionalizing sustainable procurement policies, we create a virtuous cycle of improved livelihoods, gender equity, and environmental stewardship. True sustainability must be climate-smart, eco-responsible, and gender-sensitive, ensuring that food systems both protect the environment and uplift communities.
Key sustainability actions for the school feeding program will involve promoting sustainable agro-ecological practices, setting targets for food procured to be free from harmful additives, minimizing post-harvest losses through improved food handling, packaging, and storage, integrating food waste reduction and recycling systems, and supporting women farmers and food processors through gender-responsive sourcing strategies.
Nutrition is local, and so are our solutions. At Impacter Solutions, our mission is to support African governments, donors, and partners in solving the continent’s nutrition and food security challenges with homegrown, high-impact solutions. We are collaborating with the NHGSFP to ensure the availability of up-to-date nutrient guidelines and policy frameworks, designing data-driven systems for food availability and sustainability, and capacity-building aggregators and food handlers in nutrition, food safety, and compliance.
The NHGSFP is more than a meal. It’s a strategy for national development. With smart profiling, local procurement, and a strong commitment to equity and sustainability, we can ensure every child eats well, learns better, and grows into the future leader Nigeria needs.