MAF supports school feeding programme in Karamoja, Uganda

Children benefit from the feeding programme at Akigyeno School (credit: Damalie Hirwa)

Karamoja’s annual ‘lean season’ is underway – a period marked with little rainfall and dwindling food supplies. As per the UN, this region has some of the highest rates of poverty and malnutrition in the world. In response, ‘Ezekiel 37 Ministry’ feeds children at Karamoja’s Akigyeno School. Ministry director Rebecca Sekamanya tells MAF’s Damalie Hirwa why flying with MAF transforms her work

Every year, between March and July, Uganda’s northeastern corner faces food insecurity. This lean period between planting and harvesting is particularly harsh in Karamoja.

Globally, Karamoja has some of the highest rates of malnutrition (credit: Damalie Hirwa)

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network predicts that most of Karamoja will be in ‘crisis’ until September 2024. This is due to the region’s inadequate harvests the year before.

Karamoja is one of Uganda’s least developed regions (credit: Dave Forney)

According to UNICEF, more than a thousand children under the age of five are referred to Karamoja’s Moroto Hospital every year for severe malnutrition.

Rebecca Sekamanya – Director of Ezekiel 37 Ministry, was so touched by the plight of Karamoja’s children, that she decided to establish the Akigyeno Nursery and Primary School in Karamoja’s Napak district in 2018.

Akigyeno School was the first school in the village (credit: Damalie Hirwa)

It was the first ever school in the village and today has around 300 pupils – aged from three to 17 – mostly from farming communities.

Many of Akigyeno’s farming families live in straw huts like these (credit: Jill Vine)

Feeding body and mind

A lunch of posho & beans is provided to Akigyeno’s schoolchildren (credit: Damalie Hirwa)

As well as receiving an education, children are provided with two free meals Monday to Friday – a hearty porridge breakfast and a nutritious lunch of posho (corn or maize meal) and beans.

Children cannot concentrate on their studies if they are hungry.

This little boy would not be able to study on an empty stomach (credit: Damalie Hirwa)

In addition to school days, the children also receive a free lunch on Sundays after attending Sunday School.

Given that many families are not even able to provide a meal for their children once a day, eating at school is often their children’s only source of food, particularly during the lean season.

Some children as young as three will walk up to five miles each way for an education and a free meal – it’s a journey families are willing to make to avoid starvation.

Porridge is a nutritious meal which staves off hunger (credit: Damalie Hirwa)

The school is meeting basic needs says Rebecca:

‘The families appreciate that the children can get at least a meal a day when they come to school.’

Parents of children in Napak who aren’t fortunate enough to access food let alone an education, have been resorting to desperate measures.

In February 2024, Kampala City Hall Court sentenced over 100 mothers from Napak to one-month’s community service for making their children beg on the streets of Kampala. Most street children in the capital come from Napak, Karamoja (source: Daily Monitor).

Choosing who gets to go to school

Due to capacity, it’s a tragedy that not every single child from the region can be enrolled at Akigyeno School sighs Rebecca:

‘Choosing which child gets enrolled is the most difficult thing. Now we pick a child from each home in order to give different families a chance. We work with local councils who
help us identify children in the villages.’

Those fortunate enough to be enrolled have had their lives transformed mentally and physically says head teacher Alex Okello:

‘We are trying our best to provide meals for the kids and the meals are attracting children to stay in school.’

Children are more likely to stay in school if they are fed (credit: Damalie Hirwa)

In a region where school drop-out rates are high, only two children dropped out from Akigyeno School in 2023.

With only 30% of people over the age of 10 able to read or write in Karamoja, the region is way behind its national literacy rates of 81% (source: UN and World Bank).

Slowly, Akigyeno School is bucking that trend.

Akigyeno School is slowly improving literacy rates (credit: Damalie Hirwa)

Essential work made easier by MAF

Based in America, Rebecca and the team must make the most of their precious time whenever they visit the school or carry out work in Karamoja.

Instead of wasting a whole day travelling on potholed-ridden dangerous roads from Uganda’s capital Kampala, MAF flies them to the school’s nearest airstrip in Moroto in just over an hour. From there, the school is less than an hour’s drive away.

Without MAF, Ezekiel 37 would spend a day on treacherous roads (credit:Dave Forney)

For Rebecca, MAF is a key service provider, which helps her school to function:

‘MAF flights are vital! We couldn’t do this without them because it takes us two days to fly from the US to Uganda.

‘Then we would lose another two days driving to the school and returning to Kampala. MAF flights save us a lot of time.’

Rebecca Sekamanya, Director of Ezekiel 37 Ministry and MAF passenger

From herdboy to head prefect

Daniel enrolled at Akigyeno School in 2019 when he was eight.

Former herdboy Daniel is now head prefect (credit: Damalie Hirwa)

Back then, he was a shepherd boy looking after his father’s sheep. Like many children his age from Karamoja, Daniel had never set foot in school and worked on the land instead.

While grazing the sheep one day, Daniel encountered a team from Ezekiel 37 Ministry who were registering children for school. Daniel was one of them:

‘I was so happy! I didn’t know that I would go to school. I was just walking in the village when I came across this school and they allowed me in and took my photo.’  

A couple of other schools have since sprung up in the area. However, due to their location near rivers, they are cut off during the rainy season when the banks burst, and children are unable to get to school.

Daniel – now aged 13 – is one of the fortunate ones he says:

‘There are many children who don’t go to school in our neighbourhood, so it’s a big privilege for me to be in school.’

The feeding programme at Akigyeno School has transformed his life:

‘When I’m at home, I have nothing to eat sometimes, but the school gives us posho, beans and even soap!’

Posho is a corn or maize meal-carbohydrates which release energy (credit:Damalie Hirwa)

Saved from cattle raiding

Without school, Daniel’s life could be very different.

For so many of his peers from Karamoja’s farming communities, many have become armed cattle raiders leading a violent life of stealing cattle and killing people from rival clans.

This has made the region volatile and unsafe. Since 2018, thousands of farmers have been killed and half a million cattle have disappeared, devastating livelihoods and communities (source: France 24).

When raiders attack homes and find families preparing food, they reportedly wait for the food to be served, so that they can eat it before stealing everything from the home.

Local people aren’t the only ones to encounter attacks. Staff from various NGOs and development partners have risked their lives in recent years by travelling overland to reach rural areas to implement and run projects that would benefit communities (source: Uganda’s Independent).

More reason to use MAF!

Instead of cattle raiding, Daniel – now head prefect – has his heart set on becoming a surgeon:

‘I know I will study hard to become a surgeon. When I grow up, I will help hungry children. When they pay me my salary, I will make sure that I will feed those children, or at least buy them some maize.’

We wish Daniel every success.

Daniel wants to help other hungry children when he grows up (credit: Damalie Hirwa)