In addition to improving school attendance and success rate, integrated school feeding programs play an important role as a social safety net. They constitute a key pillar of human capital development and a business opportunity for local agricultural producers.

With the technical and financial support of the Spanish Cooperation, the ECOWAS Commission launched fifteen (15) field projects in July 2024 in Lomé, Togo, to promote local initiatives for integrated school feeding models in West Africa. Selected following a call for proposals, these projects cover the fifteen (15) ECOWAS Member States. Funding for such local initiatives amounts to four million six hundred and eleven thousand, and sixty-four (4,611,064) US dollars.

These initiatives result from the Regional Project to Promote Integrated School Feeding Models in West Africa (PMAI-AO), which constitutes both a social safety net capable of cushioning the social shocks caused by food and nutrition crises, and a financially sustainable investment in human capital development. PMAI-AO contributes to build ECOWAS operational capacities in various strategic areas ranging from monitoring-evaluation/capitalization to communication. PMAI-AO also plans to set up a support-advisory system for countries through a permanent exchange platform on the theme of school feeding. Additionally, the implementation of field projects will help draw conclusions and recommendations for the development, revision and harmonization of integrated school feeding policies and schemes.

In the end, the various field projects will be evaluated and serve as a basis for designing a regional reference framework for integrated school feeding, explicitly including strategies to promote gender equality and social inclusion.