April 24th, 2018

2:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Location: Holiday Inn Cairo Maadi| Cornish El Nile, Cairo, 11431

The IFPRI-Egypt Seminar Series is part of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded project called “Evaluating Impact and Building Capacity” (EIBC) that is implemented by IFPRI. The seminar supports USAID’s Agribusiness for Rural Development and Increasing Incomes (ARDII) project’s objectives.

In partnership with

"Utilizing evidence-based research to inform policy: The Case of School Feeding Programs"

School Feeding Programs (SFP) are a popular social protection tool used in many countries to leverage nutrition and education benefits to vulnerable populations. Studies demonstrate that SFP can improve education (access and learning) and nutrition, while providing a powerful policy instrument for targeting transfers to children linked to school. However, critical evidence of impact of SFP is still scarce. Rigorous evaluations to understand what works, how, and at what cost are in many cases overlooked. This concern is also shared in the MENA region where SFP are increasingly being leveraged as interventions to improve human development outcomes.

This seminar, jointly organized by IFPRI and WFP, will present global and regional findings on the effectiveness of nutrition sensitive school feeding programs, as well as share lessons learned and good practices on the use of evaluation as a tool for policy formulation.  The seminar will feature WFPs’ school feeding programs in the region and in Egypt as well as present preliminary results of a recent impact assessment conducted by Baseera Center. Representatives from the GoE will discuss how impact evaluation findings are utilized to inform current policies and programs to improve the quality of implementation. The seminar will also serve as a chance to reflect more generally on the status of nutrition sensitive interventions in Egypt in order to identify possible areas for further partnership and collaboration among stakeholders and knowledge gaps to be tackled.