Education Minister, Dr Tunji Alausa, has called for a stronger role for schools in tackling child malnutrition, identifying school feeding, school health and nutrition education as key components of the Federal Government’s Nutrition 774 Initiative.

Alausa made the call at the Ethiopia-Nigeria Leadership Exchange on Moving the Needle on Nutrition in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he said the fight against malnutrition required stronger collaboration among government ministries and across the three tiers of government.

Speaking during a session on building a multi-sectoral framework, the minister said nutrition interventions must move beyond policy documents to practical programmes capable of reaching children and families at the community level.

He said education was central to the nutrition agenda because children’s nutrition, health, learning and overall development were closely interconnected.

According to him, school feeding provides one of the most practical entry points for the education sector, as it can simultaneously improve children’s nutrition and encourage regular school attendance.

Alausa also highlighted the integration of nutrition-related studies into the revised school curriculum, saying it would equip children with knowledge of healthy eating, well-being and healthy lifestyles.

He said the Education Ministry’s proposed contribution to Nutrition 774 would cover school feeding, school health, nutrition education and measures to improve access to quality education and school participation.

These interventions, he said, would be incorporated into local government multi-sectoral plans for food and nutrition, while education indicators would be included in the initiative’s local government scorecard to strengthen monitoring and accountability.

The minister said the approach was aligned with the National Policy on Food and Nutrition, which targets an increase in school-feeding coverage from 33 per cent to 60 per cent of primary school children by 2035.

Alausa further called for greater attention to early childhood care and development beyond the first 1,000 days of life, stressing that children continue to face critical nutritional, health and developmental needs during the wider period of early growth.

He also identified reliable and integrated data as critical to the success of Nutrition 774, saying better use of government data would help identify vulnerable children and communities, improve planning and determine whether interventions were reaching intended beneficiaries.

The minister stressed that national policies must be backed by effective implementation at state and local government levels, with clear targets, financing and monitoring mechanisms.

He said Nigeria could draw useful lessons from Ethiopia’s experience in coordinating nutrition interventions and mobilising domestic resources, but such lessons must be adapted to the country’s peculiar circumstances.

Alausa reaffirmed the Ministry’s commitment to working with relevant ministries, state governments, local government authorities and development partners to strengthen education-related interventions under Nutrition 774.

He said keeping children in school, improving learning quality and creating supportive school environments could contribute to better health, nutrition and developmental outcomes.

“Improving children’s nutrition and access to quality education is essential to building a healthier, better-educated and more productive population,” the minister said.