Social Audits: Speaking up for Home Grown School Feeding: Procurement Governance for home grown school food programme

This Learning Document is about the project’s experience with the third dimension, in which we worked to develop effective and participatory mechanisms for increased accountability by and for the programme’s stakeholders. Evidence suggests that social accountability processes, when implemented correctly, go a long way to ensure procurement is done in a more transparent way, resulting in greater effectiveness for the programmes. The ability of all stakeholders to hold public officials accountable for the proper use and deployment of public funds is powerful. In one recent example, existing social accountability practices in India’s Andhra Pradesh state were largely credited with preventing a school feeding-related scandal, such as the ones that have tragically marked school feeding programmes in other Indian states. Considering the complex and varied models of existing HGSF programmes in Ghana, Kenya and Mali, SNV sought to pilot and introduce the practice of Social Audits at the level where procurement takes place, whether at the school (Kenya), commune (Mali), or district (Ghana), to assess the effectiveness of the school feeding programmes and their benefits. The Learning Document describes our experience in conducting Social Audits, especially as they related “to support(ing) national governments’ declared intentions to buy food from their own farmers for their own social programmes over the long-term.”