The government has embarked on a project that seeks to increase food security and fight malnutrition among children and vulnerable families.

The Ministry of Agriculture is overseeing in partnership with a major stakeholder Stop Hunger Now (SHN), an international organisation that coordinates distribution of food and other life-saving support globally.

The Stop Hunger Now Rwanda programme, whose pilot phase is projected to begin in October, will support the efforts of the Ministry of Health and other nutrition-related development partners working to combat hunger and malnutrition, through supporting school feeding and early childhood development programmes by providing fully balanced nutritional meals to vulnerable children in schools and community health centres.

Tony Nsanganira, the Minister of State for Agriculture, said they have discussed the viability of the project.

"We had good discussions with them, they toured some of the potential sources of food in Rwanda, and we asked them to get us a proposal, which would inform further discussions,” Nsanganira told The New Times last week.

"We don’t want it to be food aid because we are past that level, we are looking at the programme’s sustainability and how it can boost our food security.”

According to Saira Khan, the chief executive officer of Stop Hunger Now (SHN) Southern African affiliate, about 1.4 million meals will be distributed periodically during the pilot phase, which is likely to last six months.

Siara says that SHN is due to spend one dollar on a meal, including all logistics.

"From the pilot programme, we will determine the exact figures and the costs for all the logistics. But this will solely depend on the approval of the government, because it is a joint venture,” Saira said.

The Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA) 2015 report, by the National Institute of Statistics Rwanda (NISR) indicates that malnutrition stands at 36.7 per cent in the country.

Key strategies to combat malnutrition include increasing access by school and pre-school children to nutritious food and flagship programmes such as the One Cow per Poor Family Programme, the One Cup of Milk per Child Programme and the school’s feeding initiative—which WFP says have contributed significantly to the fight against hunger and malnutrition in Rwanda.

Saira says that the organisation comes to offer a "50-50” supplement (in the context of public-private partnership) to fight hunger and malnutrition in the country.

Founded in 1998 in the USA, with the vision of "a world without hunger”, Stop Hunger Now currently operates meal-packaging programmes in the United States, Malaysia, India, Italy, South Africa, Peru and the Philippines, and has provided over 225 million meals in 73 countries in its 18 years of operation.

"We are coming to play our role and supplement government’s efforts in reducing acute and chronic malnutrition rates, particularly among children and women. In so doing, we believe it will be important for Rwanda to meet its economic development and poverty reduction goals,” Siara said.

Through partnership with the government and other nutrition-related development partners working in Rwanda, SHN, intends to distribute meals through education and health-related development programmes, as well as using food as a leverage to promote education about health, nutrition standards and livelihood creation among parents, teachers and communities at large.

Neville Martin, another SHN, official explained that the food will be flown into the country from the organisation’s stores in South Africa, and distributed to schools and community centres, which tend to have the most vulnerable preschool and school aged children.

The organisation’s food packages combine rice, soya, dehydrated vegetables and a flavoring mix that includes 23 essential vitamins and minerals into complete nutritionally balanced meals, specially formulated to combat malnutrition.

At the programme’s outset, the SHN Rwanda team intends to conduct a baseline evaluation of prospective schools and centers to ensure that the neediest ones are prioritised, as well as committing to the partnership’s demands.

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