 from the various countries, including both rural and school-feeding communities, which share the same objective. We must commend the Global Child Education Forum for providing such an excellent opportunity for the rural, school-feeding communities to come together, to share ideas, and to learn from and inspire each other. Today, there is hardly any need to make a case that is important for school-feeding. There is a global anomaly that there are multiple challenges on investment in school-feeding programs, not just in education and health, but also in the rural economy, including social architecture and agriculture. But perhaps as important is how we take this into account that school-feeding has become the game to probably the most critically-invested metric country in the investment in human character. It becomes apparent that the 21st century will be defined by knowledge and skills. The nations that are best able to present the most knowledge and the most skillful citizens will prevail in commerce, in science, in technology, and of course will enjoy the greatest prosperity and development to enjoy that prosperity. Nations that are not investment enough to produce the required level of talent and skills will be definitely a far-reaching science that has ever before in the history of mankind. Nigeria took the decision to embark on a school-feeding program as an important part of our human capital development agenda by tackling the broader issues of eradication of poverty, food and nutritional security, and increasing school enrollment. The program itself is one of six components of our social investment program, for which about 1.3 billion US dollars has been provided in every budget cycle since 2016. Of that sum itself, a percentage of it is working dedicated to the whole global school-feeding program, and that percentage is about 20% of the entire sum. Nigeria is a federation of the normal 36 autonomous states and the federal capital territory. The states are evenly and culturally diverse and which explains why we chose a decentralized program and a one-size-fits-all approach to implementing the program. So, state-specific menus are designed. They don't need availability, nutritional value, cultural sensitivity and affordability. Community participation and ownership is an important feature. The cost for a 98% of them are recruited through a community-agreed event process. Each school class has a background, farmers who supply their produce to the program who are also within the community in which the schools are. The managers and coordinators of the program were taken through fairly rigorous capacity-building sessions at different stages of implementation. The national framework for implementation as well as monitoring and evaluation of the program adds to the five global standards of school-feeding, namely policy and legal framework, program design and implementation, institutional capacity and implementation, and funding standard and community participation. Governments in the form of oversight and approval requirements is vested in our case in a sterile committee comprising the relevant ministries of education, agriculture, health, youth and sports, and public and national planning. And we also have the Minister of Women Affairs being a part of that sterile committee. The sterile committee is chaired by the Vice President and although the funding of the program will don't result in the ministries of budget and national planning, we also have the Vice President, which I have approved as a body partner actually oversees the example. And this is in some senses our work emphasizing the importance of the program. The strategic implementation team is multi-sector in composition and is led by a program manager who reports to a special advisor to the President of Social Investment who is in the office of the Vice President. She is here with me today. The Institute of Framework has come to be a critical element in the success of the program and its replicated mistakes. So to get a sense of the score of the program and the cost of the program, let me go share some facts with you. At the cost of the budget, 19 cents per chapter per day were able to provide a balance for everyone on the children. 9.3 million children from 9.2 million children in 49,000 in more than 37 whole primary schools in 26 states of Nigeria, and over 1.5 billion from the school agency, spending about 1.76 million dollars per day and over 83 million dollars that we've invested so far. The program itself employs about 95,000, 422 cooks and over 100,000 small order farms linked to the program to supply locally sourced ingredients on a regular basis. Now this translates to together the pronunciation of the figures. This translates to about 594,000 cows, 118,000 chickens, 6.8 million eggs, 83 metric tons of fish that are procured to prepare and distributed every week. And the quantity of starch and vegetable required for this program on the weekly basis is also quite impressive. With great energy and nutrients with established links to cognition that cannabinoid protein fads, iron and iodine as well as minerals, the chronic health importance are targeted by the program. The program aims to provide the percentage of the recommended nutrient intake targets of protein and prototype micronutrients such as iron, iodine, zinc, A, folium and vitamin C and 30% of the energy because of a high burden of undernutrition and micronutrient deficiency that we already have. There is also a new program attached to the food feeding program. By the end of the year at the end of this year a number of new states joining the program will increase and a national home group is set to become the latest feeding program in Africa. We were talking earlier about I think with Daniel and Alan about South Africa and how South Africa is doing, I think, possibly 200,000 more Nigerian movement and who are saying we lost the competition because of our own so there are going to be 200,000 young people like Daniel there so whatever I said as I said at the top seven of the latest food feeding program in Africa. Our feeding program has been a considerable succession and some of the possible factors are one but we learned from past decades an earlier attempt in 2004 to implement a home food feeding program in 20 states largely faith being about two states only at some point still carrying on a program. Now the basic problems around other time were around governance multi-stakeholder coordination and the viagra at the highest levels of vulnerability so we tried to avoid the same big falls in the new program especially faith one of the most important features that we tried to ensure we had been placed was an intergovernmental and gender real the federal government convinced that food feeding program was fundamental in social investment program and overall objective of radically improving human capital development now this explains the commitment of the government at the highest level secondly for transparency and accountability we share size of the program and for the very many moving parts made it imperative for us to institute a strong governance structure for care and performance to ensure transparency and accountability and those who have ability of course the program itself offered a good value of position for all participants the program was only provided with very much and a sustainable income for our families it also includes the livelihoods of most of whom now have access to musical and affordable financial projects and services that meet their needs financial inclusion is the key a labor to reducing poverty and losing prosperity and this of course the program itself considerably can financially inclusion because of course all of the participants now have bank accounts many of you in the intercontinental world will never have access and they also have access to financial literacy and other advantages moreover with the capture of the biometrics and opening of the pantheon we have seen that they are now able and we are also now capable to run for our country's needs for identification for planning and social inclusion think we institute a multi-sexual organization following the federal model I'll explain the federal model there we have five ministries five of the very many ministries as the steering committee we have the same replicated as the state government from the state's point of order to don't miss out on the program and the leadership of the program in the office of the governor of the state who are once a program manager and the program manager co-ordinates the multi-sexuality made up of individuals on ministries of health and strict planning conditions which is more or less that copy of what we have on federal level the sixth is strategic partnerships and the partnerships are going to form an important part of the success of the program the World Bank the partnership for child development and for food and medical development of the UN and of course the World Food Program are strategic partners in implementation of the National Social Investment Program in general and further complementary interventions leading to increased social benefits in Nigeria I must say here that for two years meeting and association with less energy of PCP and in Europe is an important part of the success of our program of health and of the PCP and also of lending us a ring where some people with their program co-ordinator have really been members of health for a long time I must say the program is the two-field objective of helping children reach their development potential we have seen that school feeding can encourage children to have a role and stay in school and that welfare children really participate in investment to not spend school enrollment increased by about 25% when the program began and of course that was one of the some mistakes even though also the fact that our investment in school feeding positively impacts the nutrition as well as health and learning about children enhancing our overall investment in education and development technical data from a study that was done in 2009 in 2009 on the effect of school feeding programs on primary school attendance in rural areas in Lagos can show even better that not only the school feeding in food enrollment and attendance but it also increased the grant treatment so school feeding has helped display as a critical part of human health but I have seen that efforts have not been without serious challenges first the current coverage is still very well behind the numbers that are working on the Q if we cover up all of the primary 1 to 3 children which is what we really have in mind that will be 12 million children which cover up all of them that's in all of them in the 1960s and the federal government will cover up all of them so 4 to 6 children will have 24 million and there is also of course a target to bring to zero the number of all those own children in Lagos at the moment which is close to 9 million children now that of course is where we imagine the numbers and that of course means more commitment and of course numbers are increasing everyday this is the moving time when 4 million are in conflict it's not going to be 24 million next year but that is actually the particular issue of feeding children in conflict are affected areas in the north-east of Nigeria especially in Malmousia where the numbers the numbers are large and of course security challenges remain there so feeding children in conflict wants to prevent a challenge of the fall how do we see who did this for Malta and their friends in Nigeria that there is a lot of problems to see how we can effectively deliver all those who are feeding in monistic and some of the other crisis affected areas so to ensure price and security we probably need to work with small older farmers on how to produce productivity and start to ensure reduced post-harvest losses of course we also need to do some more focused work to ensure efficiency as the numbers grow there is also a need to engage our folks on environmentally friendly cooking methods to meet the challenges of climate change as well as reduce the amount which is what we find in some of the hinterland hinterland areas and the schools and a lot of the books are using methods that are not environmentally friendly and we need to do those kind of decisions first of all is that family will always see an measurement and evaluation research towards improving our processes to maintain recovery as we grow the numbers and as well as the project activities so I also think about the funding issues and I also think that with the government a lot of that can be handled but of course there is also a really important work in collaboration with agencies and with countries of the world that I'm suspecting in the same programs and of course we have systems that are the most important thing is that governments, especially our governments must take the case of natural parts of the project to home grown school feeding there is nothing like commitment by the government itself through its own budgets through its own resources because that not only shows the commitment but it also ensures that the people themselves understand the reason and the need of the home grown school feeding and for all of the other individuals in the health sector as I can see that for the world countries such as ours and of course many other countries by far the biggest challenge for us in the next three days is that of effective investment in the health sector of our combination nutrition is key to both when the children usefully participate learn and develop and to be able to compete in an increasingly competitive global environment by 20 seconds fire Africa will have 1.2 billion over 50% of that amount will be a young person under 25 today's 60% of the employment budget in Africa Nigeria it's the most popular country will become possibly the fourth most popular destination by 25 the concept of opinion is that the early years of the lives of individuals are crucial for their mental and physical development if the necessary interventions in nutrition health care and education are missed at that critical stage that they lose more generations to start their development pretty much in the future today and in case of the future there will be a difference in the future of our people so let's go