The school feeding programme sponsored by the World Food Program (WFP) is currently integrating the National Educational Management Information System (NEMIS) data to supply the food to schools in arid areas.
“WFP is working with software developers from the Ministry of Education to capture and digitalize school meals records throughout the entire supply chain,” said Njeru Charles, WFP Meals Manager in Kenya.
He disclosed that in that respect the government is rolling out the initiative countrywide and WFP is supporting training of teachers on how to track the data, using a phone application whose development is supported by WFP with express support from the United States Department of Agriculture.
Hassan Ibrahim, Headteacher of Yathrib Primary School in Garissa, one of the schools that have ditched the manual registers for the digital one, expressed confidence in the new system saying it eases work for his busy understaffed school.
“I can update my records from anywhere. I also have a good visualization of food allocation and the movement of stock in the school store,” he said.
Ibrahim said that the mobile app is a major game changer, not just for the school meals but also for the entire tracing system as they can easily update data such as enrolment, daily attendance and allocation of books even when offline and every once in a while they connect to the internet to back up data.
Director of Primary Education Nereah Olick said that digitalizing the school meals and records has improved accountability in overall management of the programme.
She noted that school meals were critical in helping to keep students healthy in school, especially now during the county’s worst drought in four decades; and the food is the only meal they access the whole day.
By Amoto Ndiewo
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