Uganda Govt. and WFP distributing food to130,000 children to support home-learning

The Government of Uganda and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is distributing take-home food rations to school children in the Karamoja sub-region in north-eastern Uganda to support home-learning while schools remain closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak across the country, according to a news report by 'East African Business Week'.

The take-home food distributions began on July 6 and will run through the month, covering more than 300 schools in all Karamoja's nine districts. Nearly 130,000 children will each receive a ration of maize, dry beans, and fortified vegetable oil.

"This year, Karamoja was hit by insecurity, floods, diseases and locusts and then a lockdown that coincided with the lean season and cut off school meals, which attract children to school," said the Minister for Karamoja Affairs, John Byabagambi.

Byabagambi said that these compounded elements had left a vulnerable region at an even higher risk of food shortages and malnutrition, which create an unfavorable environment for home-schooling.

School meals for children were halted in Karamoja when all schools countrywide had to close to contain the spread of COVID-19. A total lockdown that followed left many parents without jobs and coincided with livestock being quarantined because of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

Even before the closure of schools and lockdown, 84 percent of people in Karamoja were unable to access a nutritious meal regularly.

With food stocks running low, many families are forced to reduce the frequency and size of meals until the harvest season from August to December.