PHOENix: Planetary Health Optimisation for Enhancing Nutrition and Food Security through School Feeding Programmes in Egypt

School feeding programmes reach 418 million children globally. Egypt, the most populous Arab country and third largest in Africa, is projected to reach 120 million people by 2030, with 42 million children under 18 and the largest school feeding programme in Africa. In 2021, while 4.9 million children were anaemic, over 9 million received nutritionally inadequate, ultra-processed dry meals heavily reliant on imported wheat. This undermines local producers and raises serious concerns around nutrition, food security, and environmental sustainability. PHOENix aims to optimise school feeding programmes in Egypt to deliver essential nutrition during critical stages of development, enhance environmental sustainability, and empower small agroecological producers and local communities. Following a planetary health perspective, I will use mixed and creative methods to map challenges and co-produce transformative, decolonial solutions for school food systems that build resilience to climate change and can be scaled across Egypt and other Global South contexts. Building on my doctoral and postdoctoral research in England, where I pioneered a planetary health framework for school meals, this fellowship will enable me to adapt this approach to the Global South, where food insecurity and climate change impacts are most acute, and the link to school feeding programmes remains under-explored.