Devex Dish: A school meals success story in Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe, an extreme El Niño-induced drought and deep foreign aid cuts are colliding — leaving millions hungry and forcing families to pull children out of school.

But one group, Mary’s Meals International, is pushing ahead where others have scaled back. Since January, the U.K.-based charity has been serving daily meals to more than 179,000 children across 350 schools, working with local partners ORAP and Mavambo Orphan Care. For many pupils, the food is the only daily meal they can count on.

“Even if we get home and there is nothing to eat, at least we have had some food at school,” Abel, a 12-year-old student from Nkayi district, tells Devex contributor Gabriella Jóźwiak. Teachers report absenteeism has fallen, and one school saw nearly 40 pupils reenroll.

The need is stark: 3.5 million children in rural Zimbabwe faced crisis-level food insecurity caused by last year’s El Niño weather phenomenon, according to UNICEF. Millions of people in areas dependent on subsistence farming have been impacted, with food shortages driving more than 22% of children out of school. Further, the Trump administration’s shutdown of USAID means Zimbabwe is losing $83 million in support — about a third of its country program. Local NGOs that once relied heavily on U.S. funding have laid off staff or suspended projects.

Mary’s Meals International’s grassroots model has been its strength. Director of Program Affiliates and Partners Alex Keay says the charity is “hugely fortunate” to draw most of its $18 million budget from small donations, giving it freedom to continue even as major donors’ priorities shift. But some of the U.S.-funded projects its partners deliver in Zimbabwe have not been so lucky — they’re now scrambling to find other financing. And major U.N. agencies operating in Zimbabwe, namely the World Food Programme and UNICEF, face budget shortfalls of more than $30 million each.

Still, the success of school meals is a global bright spot, with programs rapidly expanding worldwide. Tomorrow, the second Global Summit of the School Meals Coalition kicks off in Fortaleza, Brazil, where leaders are expected to assess progress, showcase what’s working, and mobilize new financial and political commitments. A big question is whether governments and donors can sustain the momentum in fragile and low-income countries, where gains in school meals coverage are most precarious.

Because for children like Abel, that daily meal means the energy to walk home, play soccer, and dream of staying in school.

Read: Water and aid dry up in Zimbabwe — who will feed the children?

Background: What is El Niño and how does it impact food security around the world?

Lunch money

Nearly half a million children around the world are now receiving school meals through government-led programs — 80 million more than in 2020, a 20% increase. That’s according to WFP’s latest biennial State of School Feeding Worldwide report.

Mary’s Meals International’s programming in Zimbabwe is just one example of the many benefits of investing in school meals. Once seen as a welfare measure for lower-income students, it is increasingly understood as a long-term investment with multiple payoffs: keeping children in school, boosting test scores, improving nutrition, and stimulating economies through job creation and increased demand for agricultural products, writes my colleague Ayenat Mersie. Every $1 spent on the programs generates between $3 and $9 in returns, and in some cases up to $30, the report finds.

“Governments around the world, especially in low- and middle-income countries, are showing real leadership by choosing to prioritize school meals programs,” WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain said in a statement. “They are proven to be one of the smartest, most cost-effective investments any nation can make to improve the long-term health, education and economic prosperity of future generations.”

Read: School meals surge to half a billion children, but gains are fragile

ICYMI: National leadership and innovative financing fuel a school meals boom

Related op-ed: What we feed our children can fix our planet 

And don’t miss: Inside Indonesia’s plan to feed 83 million people for free

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Future: Imperfect, tense

A key U.S. food aid program has survived the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID: Food for Peace. It buys food commodities from American farmers and sends it to people in need around the world. But less noticed has been the near-total erasure of U.S.-funded investments in food security.

“If food aid is a handout, food security is a hand up,” Dina Esposito and Maany Peyvan write in an opinion piece for Devex. “Through targeted investments that help poor farmers and small agricultural businesses access finance, markets, quality seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation, countries are able to boost their agricultural productivity, strengthen food supplies, raise incomes, and lower food costs.”

They are calling on the U.S. Congress and State Department to set a strategy for combating global hunger that combines both food aid and food security, that saves lives in the short term while building resilient food systems that allow people to feed themselves in the long term.

These are lessons the U.S. has already learned once: In 2010, the U.S. launched Feed the Future, a USAID program that worked with low- and middle-income countries to boost productivity, invest in women farmers, tap into the latest agricultural research at American universities, and work with the private sector to bring diverse crops to market. The program reached 30 million people annually, and statistics show that poverty, hunger, and malnutrition declined on average by 25% in the areas where it operated. Esposito, a former assistant administrator of the USAID Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security, led Feed the Future under the Biden administration.

Today, Feed the Future hardly exists. Funding has been cut to all but one of its research labs, and the entire team has been dismissed from USAID. “When the next food crisis comes — and with food demand rising, global agricultural productivity slipping, and climate shocks intensifying, it surely will — the United States will be even less prepared than it was in 2008 to address a hungrier, more dangerous world,” Esposito and Peyvan write.

Opinion: The next food crisis will come. The US is not ready

See also: A successful US food aid program needs agriculture investment, experts say (Pro)

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Tipping the scales

The world has passed a dangerous milestone: More children worldwide are overweight than underweight for the first time, according to UNICEF’s 2025 Child Nutrition Report. One in 10 children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 — or 188 million worldwide — are now living with obesity. That places them at heightened risk of chronic diseases such as heart conditions, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers.

“When we talk about malnutrition, we are no longer just talking about underweight children,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said last week. “Obesity is a growing concern that can impact the health and development of children. Ultra-processed food is increasingly replacing fruits, vegetables and protein at a time when nutrition plays a critical role in children’s growth, cognitive development and mental health.”

The report, titled “Feeding Profit: How Food Environments are Failing Children,” covers 190 countries and territories and finds that obesity now exceeds underweight in all the world’s regions except sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The situation is particularly acute in the Pacific islands, where traditional foods have been replaced by imported foods which are cheap and energy-dense but tend to be ultra-processed.

Related: Obesity is on the rise in Africa. Here’s what Unicef is doing about it.

See also: WHO pushes for 50% price hike on tobacco, alcohol, sugary drinks

Chew on this

A midyear update to the 2025 Global Report on Food Crises finds that conflict is driving catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity affecting 1.4 million people in Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, Yemen, Haiti, and Mali. [Global Network Against Food Crises]

What malnutrition has done to Gaza’s children. [The New York Times]

Conflicts, disasters, and funding cuts are a “perfect storm” causing acute hunger, says WFP Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau. [Associated Press]

A NASA scientist has started a rapid assessment center to predict and prevent future food supply disruptions with backing from Google and Microsoft. [Bloomberg]

Ayenat Mersie contributed to this edition of Devex Dish.