World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The First Lady and Minister of State for Karamoja Affairs, Janet Museveni, has urged the people of Nakapiripirit to grow crops and stop relying on food relief. (..) The gardens are supported by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agricultural Organisation through ACTED.

The Australian government has pledged about sh173b to fight hunger in Uganda and other African countries in the next four years. (..) The UN World Food Programme estimates over a billion people in the world lack food (..).

As African leaders gathered in Kampala mid last month to attend the African Union Special Summit on Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displace Persons, perhaps not so many of us were actually aware that elsewhere, in the UK, another conference was taking place to warn that the international law is inadequate to deal with millions of people forecast to become climate exiles in the face of escalating climate change.

Akello, 45 is a mother of six and looks after four orphans. She has lived in Anaka Internally Displaced People’s Camp (IDP’s), Amuru District, for over 20 years (.. )While living in the IDPs, people could not cultivate food, so Akello and her family depended on food distributed by the World Food Programme.

An organization that predicts famines says it expects a reduction in the number of Ugandans facing extreme hunger. (..) He [Narman Ojwe, the resident district commissioner of Moroto District in Karamoja] praised the World Food Program (WFP) for feeding the people in the region. “They distribute the food according to the number of people in a household.”

The number of Ugandans facing extreme hunger will probably fall to 1.38 million from 2.11 million between now and December as harvests improve, the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning Network, known as Fewsnet, said today.(..)Food insecurity, particularly in the dry northeastern Karamoja region, remains high with the United Nations’ World Food Program feeding 1.15 million Ugandans.

Every time I visit Katine, in north-east Uganda, an image remains in the mind for months afterwards. In May, it was a long queue of girls laughing and chatting as they waited at a dirty water pump for hours to fill their jerrycans. In September, it was the eager face of an 18-year-old boy who proudly showed me his school report and told me how it took him three and a half hours to walk to school – and three and a half hours back. I looked with incredulity at the teachers' praise for his schoolwork. When could he find time to do his homework?

A crisis is looming over the small-scale farms of Africa. Experts agree that climate change is manifesting itself in the form of prolonged drought in many parts of Africa. (..) The World Food Programme estimates that across East Africa, more than 20 million people are on the brink of starvation and in dire need of food aid.

Consecutive rain failure and poor harvests over the last four years resulting in the food crisis in Karamoja year-in and year-out, highlight the need for a new approach if the perennial food shortages are to be tackled. (..) According to Mr Stanlake Samkange, WFP Country Director, they helped communities to open new land, expand the land that is planted, and encouraged self reliance. “We have helped open up a 400-acre cassava multiplication site in Nakapiripirit, working closely with Fao, our partner. We have a similar 400-acre site in Moroto, which we plan to expand.”

Refugees at a settlement in southwestern Uganda have barricaded all roads into the camp to protest a food-aid disruption they say has caused the deaths of several children (..) But Needa Jehu Hoyah, a spokeswoman for (..) the UNHCR, told CNN (..) that no children have died in the Nakivale settlement (..) The UNHCR, along with the U.N.'s World Food Program and the Ugandan government, will deliver a food shipment to the settlement Wednesday, Hoyah said.