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UN
AGENCIES AND THE WORLD BANK
ACT TO FOSTER EDUCATION IN AFRICA
African
Regional Offices of UNDP, UNESCO/BREDA, UNFPA, UNICEF, WFP and the
World Bank signed an agreement on friday May 3, 2002 to support
the Education For All (EFA) efforts initiated by African countries.
EFA was initiated by the Dakar Framework for Action adopted at the
World Education Forum in April 2000, and reaffirms commitments made
over the past decade by African States and other partners to educational
development.
 The
parties of the Memorandum of Understanding have agreed to mobilize
technical and financial resources of their respective Offices and
Agencies to support the efforts of the Member States of the Sub-Saharan
Africa Sub-region in their follow-up actions to the Dakar Forum
on Education for All. They agree to collaborate with countries in
the Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-region to prepare their EFA National
Action Plan for it to be ready no later than 2002.
Basic education is the most effective investment to improve economies
and create literate, self-reliant and healthy societies and WFP
views school feeding projects as a concrete contribution to enable
poor families to send their children to school.
In West Africa, some 1.3 million pupils – out of 7.5 million
children attending schools; are receiving a WFP meal during the
school day. Particular attention is given to girls’ education
through the provision of take-home food rations. WFP carries out
education activities mainly in development operations but also under
relief operations in the form of emergency school feeding in Liberia
and Sierra Leone.
The Memorandum says that WFP, sister UN agencies and the World Bank
fully support the priorities established by African leaders themselves
and consider school feeding projects as a concrete contribution
to overcome poverty trough education.
In West Africa, WFP is also initiating de-worming interventions
in conjunction with school feeding activities, in collaboration
with WHO and the World Bank.
 School
feeding programmes need to be combined with education, sanitation
and health interventions through broad-based partnerships in order
to improve results and sustainability. The collaboration with UNDP,
UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF, the World Bank, the Governments and the civil
society of the Member States in order to achieve and maintain good
quality basic education for all is therefore of extreme importance
for WFP.
Last week, in the lead-up to UN Special Session on Children in New
York, the Executive Director of WFP, James Morris, called on heads
of state to commit to a global plan of action to solve malnutrition
and illiteracy among the world’s chronically hungry children.
Of the world’s 300 million chronically hungry children, 170
million are often forced to learn on empty stomachs because they
receive no food at school; 130 million don’t attend class at
all. Over sixty percent of these children are girls.
Over the past 40 years, WFP has become the largest provider of school
meals to poor children. Last year, the agency launched a global
campaign to feed and educate millions more children.
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