Students line up to wash hands before lunch at Toyoyome primary school at suburb of Cotonou, Benin, Oct. 17, 2019. Benin's Minister of State for Planning and Development Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane said China has been the main partner to the West African nation's integrated school feeding program aimed at improving school enrolment and retention rates for children. TO GO WITH Interview: China-aided school feeding program brings favorable results in Benin: official (Photo by Seraphin Zounyekpe/Xinhua)
COTONOU, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Benin's Minister of State for Planning and Development Abdoulaye Bio-Tchané said China has been the main partner to the West African nation's integrated school feeding program aimed at improving school enrolment and retention rates for children.
In an exclusive interview with Xinhua earlier this month in Benin's economic capital Cotonou, the official said that the country has achieved good results from this program with Chinese support.
"The contribution of China to the implementation of the national integrated school feeding program, through food donation of nearly 3,800 tons of rice worth 30 million yuan (about 4.2 million U.S. dollars), actually allowed Benin's government to achieve favorable results that underpin this program," he said.
"We thought it's essential to increase and speed up our efforts of school canteens, and it was for that reason that since 2016, we have first implemented a program which enabled us to feed 31 percent of Benin's public primary schools with canteens, or about 351,000 pupils", Bio-Tchané said.
"A year later, we scaled up and reached 51 percent of public primary schools in Benin, or 537,400 children", he said, adding that the next challenge is the expansion of the program to all the public primary schools in the country.
According to Abdoulaye Bio-Tchané, the tripartite cooperation between Benin, China and the World Food Programme (WFP) has made possible the success of the policy.
"To implement this school feeding program, we identified, from the start, WFP for partnership and its expertise in the domain in order for us to have a more acceptable, operational and efficient framework", he said.
"When we wanted to intensify this program and reach the 51 percent rate of schools covered from 31 percent, we have sought China for support and it accepted", Bio-Tchané said as he enjoyed the smooth operation of the tripartite cooperation.
He explained that China was requested for financing and assistance, whereas WFP was called for the implementation of the assistance jointly with the government of Benin that expects to carry on the tripartite cooperation.
Regarding the tripartite cooperation between Benin, China and WFP, the resident-representative of the international institution in Benin Guy Mesmin Adoua said it has achieved positive results and this cooperation model could be duplicated elsewhere.
"It is a model we want to share with other sub-regional countries, especially after the positive results achieved here in Benin through the implementation of the school feeding program", he said.
"I believe with this tripartite cooperation model, Benin is taking the lead", Guy Mesmin Adoua said.
Bio-Tchané affirmed that his country has involved China in the program so as to benefit from the Chinese expertise in the agricultural sector and in the fight against food insecurity.
China has achieved tremendous transformation in many sectors over the past several decades, particularly in the agricultural sector and now Chinese people talk not only of food self-sufficiency but also of exportation, the official said.
"We want to eradicate hunger and we believe the cooperation with China can be supportive for us to achieve more quickly the zero hunger objective." he said.
