This review aimed primarily to investigate the current trends of overweight and obesity in school children in the African context, secondly to explore the contribution of home and school environments on the children's food choices and lastly suggesting measures for creating a healthier food environment. Despite the increase in overweight and obesity among school children, empirical evidence on their determinants in the African context is scarce, thus calls for consideration of home and school environments. A literature search was conducted between October and December 2018 using Medline (PubMed), Directory of Open Access Journals, Google Scholar, manual search and "grey" literature. This review included articles published between the 1st January 2008 and 30th June 2018. Out of 343 articles, 49 were included for the full text reading after meeting the inclusion criteria. Five reports from grey literature were also included. Results show that the prevalence of overweight and obesity among school children in Africa is increasing and ranges from <5% to >40% in the 10-year period in which the review was taken. High socioeconomic status, urban residence and female gender predicted higher prevalence of overweight/obesity. Few reviewed articles on the contribution of home and school environments on children's food choices showed a shred of evidence, thus calls for further research to address this gap. This review found an increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity in school children in Africa. Therefore, further investigation of home and school environment is imperative to curb the increase in the magnitude of overweight and obesity.

Purpose This study aims at determining the risk of physical inactivity and sedentary behaviors on overweight and obesity among primary school children aged 10–13 years in Tanzania. Design/methodology/approach A case-control study was conducted from January to March 2020 involving 69 overweight/obese children as cases and 138 normal weight children as controls. Cases were identified as having body mass index-for-age ≥ +1 standard deviation (SD) and controls as those having BMI-for-age range between −2 SD to <+1 SD. A validated questionnaire was used for data collection on daily physical activities and sedentary behavior types, frequency duration and activity score. An independent sample t-test was used to compare means of activity score between cases and controls. Binary logistic regression was used to predict risk factors for overweight/obesity. Findings Risk factors for overweight/obesity were listening to music and/or radio for >2 h/week (OR 2.7, 95% CI 1.2–6.1) and walking for exercise <2 h/week (OR 2.1, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.1–4.1). On the other hand, rope skipping for >2 h/week (OR 0.14, 95% CI 0.03–0.7) was a protective factor against overweight/obesity. Controls had a significantly higher mean score of being active during lunch breaks compared to cases (p = 0.012). Cases had higher weight, height and percentage body fat than controls (p < 0.001). The home environment provided more avenues for physical activity than the school environment. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is original research work and the first case-control study to predict physical activity and sedentary behaviors as risk factors for overweight and obesity in Tanzanian school children.

Background Informed dietary choices during childhood is necessary for building good eating habits in the present and future generations. There is a significant increase globally in trends of over nutrition, specifically, overweight and obesity among school children in Africa calls for consideration of home and school environments. Methods A systematic literature search was conducted between October to December 2018 using Medline (PubMed), Directory of Open Access Journals and Google Scholar databases. Also, a grey literature review was conducted to identify and retrieve relevant documents and reports some of which from websites of international organizations. Major topics of interest were home and school food environments, dietary choices, school children and Africa. Out of 318 articles 30 were included in the full text read after meeting the inclusion criteria such as focusing on school children in Africa. Four reports from grey literature were also included. This review includes articles published between the 1st January 2008 and 30th June 2018. Results Available data from reviewed articles showed that obesity prevalence among school children in Africa is on the rise and ranges from less than 5% to more than 30% across countries. Few articles investigated the contribution of home and school environments on school children’s food choices which necessitates more research in this area. Conclusion Therefore, this review suggests that for effective implementation of childhood overweight and obesity reduction strategies, investigation of home and school determinants of children’s food choices is imperative.