Malnutrition stunts education performance in Tanzania

By Kizito Makoye

DODOMA, Tanzania (AA) -  On any given morning, you are bound to see 12-year-old Edson Mgaya walking through dew-laden grass to reach his school some four kilometers (2.5 miles) from his home in Tanzania.

“I want to be a teacher when I grow up,” he says. “My mother said school is my best bet, if I want to succeed in life.”

The Tubugwe Primary School pupil, in the drought-hit Kongwa district in Tanzania’s capital city Dodoma, is one among many children currently benefitting from the government’s free education policy.

This policy, adopted in 2016, is expected to increase enrolment, especially in communities that have struggled to pay for their children’s education. With the rise in student numbers, however, one issue that analysts are grappling with is the influence of good diet on education achievement.

Teachers often complain about a noticeable lack of focus from some of their students that, they say, is because children sometimes come to class hungry.

“We don’t have any meal services at our school, that’s why very few pupils stay in their classrooms throughout the day," said John Lemweli, a teacher at Tubugwe. "Even if they stay, they don’t pay attention to their teachers.”

Mgaya's daily routine in the impoverished district shows some of the challenges that he and his peers are struggling to overcome.

“We don’t take breakfast or lunch at school, but my mother sometimes gives me boiled cassava [a starchy root crop] to eat when I feel hungry,” he told Anadolu Agency.

Although advocates of child health have yet to conclusively prove the link between better nutrition and pupil’s academic performance, recent studies show that a poor diet can indeed affect a child's thinking skills, health and even behavior.

A better meal, particularly breakfast, can affect the mental capacity of school-aged children, enhancing their psycho-social well-being, reduce aggression and enhance pupil’s personal discipline, researchers say.

-Malnourishment

In Tanzania, nutrition experts suggest children in regions with higher proportions of severe malnutrition or stunting are likely to have dismal performance at school.

However, available data suggest the connection between nutrition and success in education may not be as straightforward.

In Kongwa, where Mgaya’s school is located, stunting is a significant problem. Despite some improvement in child nutrition status, the district has one of the largest rates of malnourishment in the country, with nearly one out of every two children suffering from stunting, according to data from the Tanzanian Bureau of Statistics.

But Kongwa has recorded some improvements in primary school leaving examinations, with the pass rate rising from 44 percent in 2015 to 54 percent in 2016.

Other districts are showing a similar pattern. According to the 2014 Tanzania National Nutrition survey, the level of chronic malnutrition or stunting in Tanzania is “very high”, upwards of 40 percent in nine regions. Yet almost all of these regions are showing above-average pass rates.

However, when using literacy as a benchmark, a different story emerges. Kagera, for example, which has the highest rate of malnutrition or stunting has one of the lowest literacy rates in the country, suggesting there may indeed be a link between nutrition and success in education.

“A serious nutritional deficiency due to stunting has the potential to cause delay in cognitive development of a child’s brain faculties thus affecting his school performance,” Maria Msangi, a senior nutritionist at Tanzania’s Foods and Nutrition Centre, says.

According to estimates, more than 2.7 million children under five years of age out of 9.2 million are stunted, with 430,000 children suffering from acute malnutrition, 100,000 of which are diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition.

“Stunted children are not only short for their ages but their brains can incur lasting damage likely to impair their learning capacity and lower their productivity and income later in life,” said Leonard Henerico, a special education expert based in Kibaha, a region outside Dar es Salaam.

-Inequality

A recent World Bank report -- Learning to Realize Education’s Promise -- suggests millions of young students in low and middle-income countries face the prospect of lost opportunity and lower wages in later life because their primary and secondary schools are failing to educate them to succeed in life.

“One cause for worry is the growing inequality in outcomes based on location. Where a child lives has the most profound effect on whether or not they will learn, whether a child’s mother is educated, whether the child attended pre-school or even whether they are stunted or not,” said Aidan Eyakuze, executive director of Twaweza, an education think tank.

Ummy Mwalimu, a government minister, said the state has taken various initiatives to solve the problem -- such as developing a national strategy to ensure that women of reproductive age and infants get adequate nutrition.

“If you read the Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey report, you will see that stunting problem has been declining from 42 percent to 37 percent in the last five years,” Mwalimu said.

The minister said although Tanzania does not have a shortage of food people in rural areas do not have enough awareness about what type of food they need to feed their children, she added.

For Mgaya, his priorities are simple: “I want to live a better life, when I finish get a job and forget all the suffering that our family has been through.”