A report by the Auditor General shows financial discrepancies in Nairobi County’s ‘Dishi na County’ school feeding initiative, including its pilot phase with Food for Education.
- •Launched in December 2023, the ‘Dishi na County’ feeding programme aims to provide affordable meals to students in public primary and Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) centres across Nairobi.
- •The County contracted ‘Food for Education’ — a non-profit— to supply meals at Ksh 25 per plate and the company was paid Ksh 262.2 million out of a KSh 346 million invoice that financial year.
- •According to the audit, while learners contributed KSh 5 per plate directly to Food for Education, the County still paid the full KSh 25 per meal instead of adjusting its contribution to KSh 20 as required.
This oversight allowed the implementor to collect KSh 30 per plate resulting in overpayments that inflated its earnings by millions of shillings.
This was also the case at the Central Kitchen at Mutuini Primary School, which was constructed by the non-profit before being handed over to the county. The kitchen serves 17 schools, including five high schools, and was flagged for charging high school students KSh 30 per plate.
Further scrutiny of the programme highlighted procedural gaps — where the County Executive engaged ‘Food for Education’ for a pilot exercise without a formal agreement, complicating accountability for the partnership. The Auditor General also flagged a €1,005,000 (approx. KSh 145.7 million) donation from the Embassy of France, earmarked for feeding 25,000 vulnerable children.
The donation was disbursed directly to Food for Education but the audit could not verify how it was utilized, citing the absence of proper oversight mechanisms by the county government.
The Plot Thickens…
The report also exposed procurement irregularities in the construction of central kitchens for the programme. In one instance, a KSh 32.5 million tender for a kitchen project lacked transparency, with evaluators failing to sign score sheets and contradicting findings within the evaluation reports.
Physical inspections revealed substandard work at Toi Primary Kitchen, where visible wall cracks, missing water connections, and incomplete gas installations were identified just a year after completion. The contractor also failed to install key amenities, including a driveway and parking lights valued at KSh 500,000.
Founded by Wawira Wanjiru in 2012, Food for Education provides meals hundreds of thousands of meals to over 1, 200 schools in the country. It aims to feed at least 1 million primary school children countrywide by 2027.
The non-profit had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publishing.
