Overview
Uganda faces a triple burden of malnutrition, with secondary school learners caught in the middle of undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency, and rising overnutrition. A 2024 dietary assessment covering 4,008 learners across 60 secondary schools in and around Kampala found that only 25% consumed all five recommended food groups daily, school meals delivered just 29% of iron requirements, and 98% of school canteens sold sugar-sweetened beverages without restriction. No existing programme in Uganda addresses the urban secondary school food environment as an integrated system. The 18-month proof-of-concept pilot is designed to test what works, at what cost, and under what conditions, and to generate evidence that supports national scale-up. The project operates through four integrated components and is designed to feed findings directly into Uganda’s active national school feeding policy development process. The independent evaluation is a core project output and will be the primary basis on which GAIN and partners assess whether this model merits scale-up. We are therefore looking for a thought partner who can engage critically and constructively throughout implementation and who brings intellectual rigour and independence to tell us what the evidence shows.