The Republic of Congo has a young and mostly urban population. More than half its 3.7 million inhabitants are under 20. Although one out of five children under five years of age suffers from chronic malnutrition, only two percent of the country’s 10 million hectares of arable land are currently exploited. This leads to massive imports, which represent about 70 percent of the country’s food needs, and often results in high food prices very dependent on international market prices.
Successive armed conflicts in the Republic of Congo over the last decade have had a highly detrimental effect on food production because of the destruction of infrastructure and problems of market access. Some local food is therefore very expensive, and access to the food necessary for an adequate diet for the poor is very limited. According to 2010 WFP Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Assessment more than one family in four has poor or limited food consumption in two departments (Lekoumou and Plateaux) and more than 10 percent of families suffer from food insecurity in another three departments – Cuvette, Pool and Niari.
Internally displaced people who were living in Brazzaville have returned to their homes. However, they still have to reconstruct their livelihoods in places where the local infrastructure has often not yet been rebuilt. About 131,000 people have returned to Pool region. Some of have received seeds and tools to restart agricultural, but many remain unable to farm because of continued insecurity.
In Pool, Bouenza and Lekoumou regions, the manioc mosaic virus continues to deprive many families of their main source of revenue and staple food. The virus has reached the plateaux regions and is likely to continue to spread if unchecked.
In October 2009, residents of the Equateur province in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo began to cross the river into Congo-Brazzaville, fleeing ethnic conflicts in their home areas. WFP has mounted an emergency response in the Republic of Congo to deliver food assistance to 115,000 refugees in the Northern Likouala province. This will continue in 2011 until a UNHCR voluntary repatriation operation starts if security conditions are met.
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