School canteens: Thanks to Caesar what is Caesar’s (Corner paper)

Ouagadougou: The Council of Ministers adopted, on Thursday April 25, 2024, a report relating to measures for the diligent implementation of school canteens as well as the acquisition of the minimum schoolbag on the resources transferred from the State to the communes. According to the minutes of the government meeting, as of December 31, 2023, of the 336 municipalities benefiting from transferred resources, only 36 have actually acquired the food. The same document indicates that 'of these 36 municipalities, six (6) were able to receive the food before the start of the school year but none of them was able to make this food available to the schools'. The intention of the Burkinabe executive is therefore to allow the department in charge of National Education to improve the governance of resources previously transferred from the minimum school bag and school canteens for the benefit of students and educational structures. Concerning the specific case of school canteens, it is more than beneficial to consid er resolving the issue of delays in distribution. Indeed, with the sometimes incomprehensible delays, we are completely missing the objectives sought through the establishment of school canteens. These objectives are, among others, keeping students in school, improving academic results, and combating dropouts and other student losses. However, even if the issue of delays could be resolved, many other challenges remain. These relate firstly to the quantity and quality of meals served to students. In this regard, there is no shortage of complaints. Through social networks and/or the media, parents continue to denounce the form of meals served to their children. Complaints also relate to certain destinations diverted from food. Some believe that with the complicity of certain teachers and school officials, delays would be orchestrated in order to divert the food initially intended only for students, for other purposes. This is how actors other than students often share bags of rice and cans of oil from scho ol canteens, to the detriment of the real recipients. Unfortunately. Also, we remember, in mid-February, the press reported that a "large network of school rice fraudsters" was dismantled in Bobo-Dioulasso. The announcement was made by the National Anti-Fraud Coordination (CNLF). It was during a lively press conference on Thursday, February 15, 2024, in the town of Sya. According to media reports which cite the coordinator of the CNLF, Yves Kafando, 'the investigations made it possible to discover in a stock store in the town of Bobo-Dioulasso, 441 bags of 50 kg of rice intended for the canteen school, 901 empty bags stamped +LIZO+…'. It must be recognized that such a diversion would be very difficult, if not impossible, without the complicity of actors in the management system. We rightly need to keep our eyes open in the management of school canteens so as not to undermine the efforts of the State which works tirelessly to keep students in school, to improve academic results and against dropouts and oth er student losses. In short, the food intended for the students must reach them not only on time, but also in full. In other words and as if to paraphrase a biblical passage: 'to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God'. Source: Burkina Information Agency