Medair started a primary school feeding programme in March 2003 in two districts in Zimbabwe: Gokwe North, Midlands and Mudzi district, Mashonaland East. In total approximately 85,000 children in all the 147 primary schools in the two districts receive one meal of CSB porridge per day.

The objectives of the programme are two fold. Firstly, to increase the school attendance and by this improve and maintain the educational level of a future population. Although the economical crisis has a negative effect on school enrolment, the programme has at least a dampening effect by giving an extra incentive for children to attend to school.

The second objective is to improve the nutritional status of the children. To monitor this in each district 10 schools are selected as 'sentinel' schools. At each sentinel school 40 children are weighed and measured each month to assess their nutritional status. In addition, three times a year 40 children at each of the 147 schools are measured. The collected data clearly shows the positive effects of the programme on the nutritional status of the school children.

Since many primary schools also have pre-schools onsite, and as there is little or no under-five feeding taking place in Mudzi or Gokwe North, it was decided to include pre-school children in the programme. In Gokwe North they were included from November 2003 and in Mudzi they have been included from January 2004.

The UK annexed Southern Rhodesia from the South Africa Company in 1923. A 1961 constitution was formulated that favoured whites in power. In 1965 the government unilaterally declared its independence, but the UK did not recognize the act and demanded more complete voting rights for the black African majority in the country (then called Rhodesia). UN sanctions and a guerrilla uprising finally led to free elections in 1979 and independence (as Zimbabwe) in 1980. Robert MUGABE, the nation's first prime minister, has been the country's only ruler (as president since 1987) and has dominated the country's political system since independence. The combination of a controversial land reform programme which has seen the forced redistribution of farming land from white to black farmers and a subsequent slump in agricultural production, as well as a region-wide drought, means that as many as half of the total population are suffering from moderate to severe food shortages. Continued economic and political instability have further undermined the ability of the country to cope with the current crisis and there remain widespread shortages of all basic commodities.

Over all these troubles hangs the spectre of a devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic. Zimbabwe also has one of the highest incidences of HIV in the world, currently estimated at 35%. This severely affects the country's coping mechanisms and exaggerates the effect of the already occurring brain-drain due to emigration. Life expectancy in Zimbabwe has fallen from 60 years in the early 1980's to around 37 years today.