Press and News Hunger meets its match: PABRA’s school feeding initiative reaches 509 Rwandan schools
On 26 May 2026 in Rwanda’s Western Province, PABRA, the Government of Rwanda and partners launched the 3SFI Project across 509 schools in Rusizi, Nyamasheke and Karongi to fight malnutrition and improve learning through biofortified high-iron beans in school feeding programs.
Hamimu Mbarushimana, a Head Teacher at GS Bugarama Cité School in Rusizi District in Rwanda’s Western Province, has learned to read hunger as easily as he reads a class register.
In his school of 2,716 learners, many children arrive in the morning having eaten nothing since the previous day. Some depend entirely on the school meal to get through the day. When food is uncertain at home, attendance, concentration, and even classroom discipline tends to follow the same pattern.
“Some children only eat once a day,” he said. “Since they receive lunch at school, these beans are very important in improving their nutrition.”
That reality is precisely what Rwanda’s new school feeding approach is trying to change, not by introducing unfamiliar foods or complex interventions, but by improving the nutritional value of what is already on the plate.
Rubyogo (Right) sharing insights on improved bean varieties with Deputy Head of Mission at the Swiss Embassy in Rwanda Ueli Mauderli (middle) during the Project launch.
An initiative in full swing
On 26 May 2026, in Rusizi District, that approach moved from scattered school gardens and pilot plots into a formally launched national-scale program. The Scaling Sustainable School Feeding Innovation (3SFI) Project was officially unveiled in Western Province, bringing together government officials, researchers, diplomats, and development partners to consolidate what has already been unfolding in school gardens like Hamimu’s.
The project is funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and implemented by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT through the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) in partnership with Government of Rwanda. Its focus is deceptively simple: replace ordinary beans in school meals with biofortified, high-iron varieties that look and cook the same but carry significantly higher nutritional value.
3SFI targets 509 schools across Rusizi, Nyamasheke, and Karongi districts, reaching over 445,000 schoolchildren, many of whom rely on school meals as their most dependable source of daily nutrition.
Behind those figures sits a deeper problem: persistent iron deficiency and malnutrition among school-aged children, especially in rural areas where diets are limited, and household food insecurity is common. In such settings, school feeding is often the only consistent nutritional safety net available.
