New York, 21 September 2026 — Sierra Leone’s Minister of Information and Civic Education, Chernor Bah, has called for school feeding to be treated as part of a wider national investment in education, agriculture, youth employment and human-capital development.
Minister Bah made the call during a high-level event on the margins of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The event, titled “School Meals for the Future: Leaders Accelerating Progress,” was co-hosted by the World Food Programme and The Rockefeller Foundation.
It brought together senior government officials, international development leaders, philanthropists and some of the world’s most influential content creators to discuss how locally produced school meals can improve learning while strengthening national food systems.
Speakers included His Majesty King Letsie III of Lesotho; Kenya’s First Lady, Rachel Ruto; former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown; Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus; Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Ma. Theresa Lazaro; World Food Programme Acting Executive Director Carl Skau; Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah; and global content creator Jimmy Donaldson, popularly known as MrBeast.
Minister Bah joined France’s Minister Delegate for International Partnerships, Éléonore Caroit, and youth climate educator Sage Lenier on a panel examining how influence, civic action and youth leadership can accelerate progress.
Drawing on his own experience, Minister Bah said the issue was deeply personal.
“I went to school hungry,” he said. “Like many children in Sierra Leone, I knew what it meant for a parent to face an impossible choice: food for the family or transport to school.”
He explained that his early advocacy focused heavily on access to education, but that his own experience had shown him that children do not experience education and hunger as separate issues.
“For a child, the questions are simple: Can I get to school? Can I eat? Can I concentrate? Can I dream beyond today?” he said.
Minister Bah connected this experience to President Julius Maada Bio’s wider national development vision. He said Sierra Leone had made a historic bet on education through the Free Quality School Education programme, expanding access and placing human-capital development at the centre of national policy.
“But once we made that bet on education, we also had to bet on feeding children in school,” he said. “And once we commit to feeding children in school, we must confront the bigger national question: can we feed our own country?”
He said this was the important connection between Free Quality School Education and the President’s Feed Salone initiative. One invests in the knowledge and potential of Sierra Leone’s children, while the other seeks to build the productive capacity needed to feed the population, create employment and strengthen the economy.
For Sierra Leone, he argued, school feeding should therefore not be treated as a stand-alone social programme. It sits at the intersection of education, agriculture, nutrition, youth employment, local enterprise and national self-reliance.
Minister Bah noted that Sierra Leone is one of the youngest countries in the world, with a median age of about 19. More than 55 percent of the country’s land is arable, while close to 60 percent of the population is involved in some form of agriculture.
“These are not disconnected facts,” he said. “We have millions of young people who need opportunities, farmers who need reliable markets and children who need nutritious meals. Properly designed, these are not three separate problems. They can become one integrated solution.”
He said locally sourced school meals could provide dependable markets for farmers while creating opportunities for young people across the agricultural value chain as producers, processors, aggregators, transporters, technology providers and entrepreneurs.
The Minister also placed the issue within Sierra Leone’s national civic education agenda. He explained that Feed Salone is the second pillar of the National Civic Education Strategy, built around the message: “Grow what we eat. Eat what we grow.”
“That is not only an agricultural slogan. It is a statement about citizenship,” he said.
“When a young Sierra Leonean grows food, builds an agribusiness, chooses locally produced rice or develops technology that connects farmers to schools, that is not only economic activity. It is civic action,” he said.
Concluding his intervention, Minister Bah said Sierra Leone’s approach could be expressed through one connected national ambition:
“We bet on education. So we had to feed children in school. Now we must bet on feeding the country and we must do it locally.”
He added that a locally produced school meal can keep a child in school, provide a farmer with a market, create work for a young person and strengthen national confidence.
“The school meal is where our investment in the child meets our belief in ourselves as a country,” he said.