Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and the world's seventh largest nation with approximately 182 million inhabitants. The population is growing at a pace of about 2.7 % each year, and more than half of the population is under 30 years old. According to the World Bank, around 40 % of Nigerians (83 million people) live below the poverty line, while another 25 % (53 million) are vulnerable.
The National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme is part of a N500 billion funded social investment programme designed by the Federal Government to tackle poverty and improve the health and education of children. It aims to feed more than 24 million school children when completely implemented, making it the largest school feeding programme of its kind in Africa. In July 2021, Hajia Sadiya Farouq, Minister of the Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development division that oversees the NHGSFP, said already approximately nine million pupils across the country are currently benefiting from the recently rolled-out NHGSFP.
HID Global technology plays a key role in ensuring access to food is available to those children most vulnerable. The HID Global DP4500 fingerprint reader is part of the biometric system used to verify the primary school recipients and update the programme’s records for improved effectiveness, transparency and accountability. Irish web software development studio Plovtech was hired by the Nigerian government to develop the NHGSFP app that helps enroll and verify program participants.
Olatunde Immanuel, Regional Manager CEWA at HID Global commented, “Our devices have been deployed to targeted schools in the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria to identify the properly enrolled beneficiaries qualified to take part in this incredible program. It’s projects such as this one that demonstrate how innovative global technologies like biometrics can be applied to support basic necessities – in this case, a daily meal to improve the well-being of children while boosting local economies.”
Designed as a multi-faceted intervention to drive school enrolment and enhance nutrition, the NHGSFP also supports local production of food, and encourages employment and income generation for farmers and cooks. The overall effort was created to assist vulnerable Nigerians across a range of age groups and categories, including youths, elderly persons, widows, poorest of the poor, children and micro-businesspersons.