The Politics of School Feeding Program Introduction: Lessons from Nigeria

School feeding (or school meal) programs are an essential welfare policy instrument, especially in low- and middle-income countries. If well designed and sufficiently funded, school feeding programs can increase food security as well as school enrollment and attendance rates and thus educational outcomes. So far, however, the welfare state literature has paid only limited attention to explaining the global and comparative development of school feeding policy. This paper contributes to filling this gap by conducting a case study of the development of Nigerian school feeding policy with an empirical focus on the 2016 introduction of Nigeria’s current National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP). The political process behind this successful policy reform is compared with an earlier, failed attempt to introduce a national school feeding program in 2005. Methodologically, the paper relies on within-case comparison as well as process tracing based on document and interview data. The paper argues that changes in global policy ideas and differences in government ideology can explain why the introduction of a national school feeding program failed in 2005 but succeeded in 2016.