Dr Lesley Drake – Director of Partnership for Child Development, School of Public Health, Imperial College London.

School feeding is the world’s most extensive safety net programme, with nearly one in two primary school children receiving a meal every school day. Over the last decade the coverage has doubled in Africa to 65.9 million school children, with the fastest rate of growth in Nigeria, up from 1.05 million in 2017 to 9.9 million in 2022.

Nigeria implements one of the largest school meals programs in Africa designed around four key principles: transparency, equity, efficiency, and sustainability. Besides providing nutritious daily school meals to around 10 million children, the programme has created 106,000 jobs, mainly for women, and provides reliable output support for over 200,000 local famers. It also supports the local food economy across sectors such as poultry and aquaculture by sourcing over 7.6 million eggs and 98 metric tons of fish products.

Dr Lesley Drake is committed to child development issues and has focused her career on translating quality research into holistic and operational solutions for comprehensive school health and nutrition (SHN).

Her work, in partnership with leaders from multiple sectors, has contributed to global efforts to achieve equitable Education for All (EFA). With over 20 years' experience in advancing global SHN, Lesley has managed the Partnership for Child Development (PCD) since 2007 while simultaneously leading the development of Deworm the World.

Working in partnership with governments and global partners, PCD provides the needed technical assistance to enable scale up of nationally owned SHN programmes, so as to facilitate sustainable health interventions are delivered to millions of children around the world. Lesley's focus on evidence-based decision making and programming stems from her strong research background. Lesley holds a PhD in Epidemiology/Parasitology from Imperial College London, where she analysed the scientific grounding of the inter-relationship between parasites and their human hosts and how this might be exploited in the quest for more effective drug and vaccine design.