World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

WFP nutrition support helps improve the health of children under five as well of pregnant women and nursing mothers. More than 29,500 children are benefitting from  WFP's supplementary feeding programme at 338 government-run health centres across Malawi. The food rations treat malnutrition... and provide hope for mothers like Asiyileni Bwanali.

School meals do not only fill stomachs. They also attract students to school and help them to concentrate on their lessons. In the case of girls, they do even more. They can help prevent them from leaving school early and getting married before they are ready.

A cross-section of people, from VIPs to ordinary community members, got together on World Food Day in October to share lessons they had learned about how to make more nutritious food a part of their daily lives.

"Here I am, a changed and empowered woman” says Rosemary Kaphadzale. As member of the Chikwatula farming cooperative in Malawi, she was able to sell her surplus maize to WFP – and to use the proceeds to improve the life of her children.

Food assistance enables millions of people in southern Africa to cope with the impact of HIV/AIDS, high food prices and natural disasters. But with WFP facing an unprecedented budget shortfall, many risk losing this critical support.

Once left behind to work in homes or fields, girls now flock to school in Malawi. All it took was a free meal – and a 12.5 kilogramme bag of maize.

A daily bowl of corn-soya porridge is enough to keep September Mzondi in school in central Malawi – and to feed his ambition to travel the world as a pilot.

Nicole Menage, chief of WFP’s food procurement service, talks to web writer Michelle Hough about a little-known fact: WFP bought over three-quarters of its food in 2006 in developing countries.

Despite China’s rapid economic growth and India’s healthy democracy, you could say that there’s one area where Africa beats the Asian giants: in the famine stakes. Dr Stephen Devereux, editor of the book “The New Famines” (Routledge 2006) talks to WFP web writer Michelle Hough about why Africa is on the frontline of the chronic hunger battle.

James T. Morris, the U.N. Special Envoy for Southern Africa, on Saturday praised the Government of Malawi, UN agencies, and non-government organizations (NGOs) for helping to stave off food crises in the last few years but urged all actors to now embrace other challenges facing the country.