By Ghion Hagos
Addis Ababa - During the past school year, about 500 000 primary school children in Ethiopia have benefited from a feeding programme sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund and the World Food Programme.
A school-feeding project was launched in early 1994 as a pilot project in the Woredas districts where there was a chronic lack of food and malnutrition problems, the WFP country representative office said.
Food was used as an incentive to increase enrolment. If attendance could be stabilised, this would reduce the drop-out rate and nutritious meals would enhance children's learning capacity, said Unicef's country representative office in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia has been exposed to chronic food shortages in a five to seven-year cyclical drought, as the country's agricultural technology depends on rain-fed farming. This impacts on children, particularly those who have to walk long distances to primary schools on empty stomachs.
Nutritionists with WFP, Unicef, and the World Health Organization (WHO), refer to this as "short-term hunger" which may affect the attention span and learning abilities of children.
A report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesc) pointed out that "breakfast-deprived children fall asleep in class and are unable to benefit from the education provided them".
Enrolment in rural Ethiopia was very low and drop-out rates were high in areas where food was scarce as in Woredas before the school-feeding programme started and "which has since proven to be a potent weapon in these areas," WFP notes.
"Enrolment has grown from the pilot phase 40 000 students in 1994 in 40 primary schools to over half a million in 1 036 schools in 2005 by the 2004/2005 academic year", a WFP officer said.
The enrolment figures now extend to six of Ethiopia's nine regions.
UN agencies note that Ethiopian authorities have pressed for its expansion as drop-out rates have decreased dramatically and academic performance has greatly improved.
Ethiopia was one of the 189 UN members that pledged to attain the eight Millennium Development Goals by the year 2015. Two of these goals are achieving universal primary education and promoting gender equality in primary and secondary education.
In response to the Ethiopian government's request, the WFP introduced a Special Girls' Initiative in 2002, to redress the extremely low enrolment of girls in primary schools, especially those from pastoralist families, who travel widely in search of pasture and water for their animals.
Girls did not attend school regularly because their parents felt they were unable to travel the long distances and sent boys instead, thus leading to a wide gender gap in the enrolment figures.
Schools were then built in pastoralist areas to encourage them to settle permanently and allow their children to attend school.
The initiative supports girls from grades one to eight in the Afar, Oromiya, Somali and south Ethiopia regions, benefiting 40 000 girls in primary schools, according to WFP.
Some girls began telling their parents that they would rather continue their education than marry. In addition, every girl, who attends schools for at least 80 percent of each term, receives eight litres of vegetable oil to take home.
Edible oil was selected as an incentive to attend school because it was "a widely used and favoured food item" among the pastoralist communities, WFP noted.
"Its nutritional value is very high, and it is the dearest and relatively high-priced commodity in rural areas that is very easy to store and distribute, which can easily be turned into cash." - Sapa-dpa