World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

WFP is at the forefront of humanitarian logistics in Zimbabwe, delivering much-needed food assistance to more than a million people in 40 districts this year. However, the number of Zimbabweans benefiting from WFP’s role as logistics service provider and advisor to government and other humanitarian organisations is much greater. In response to a request by the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, WFP has recently assessed the national supply chain of a nutritional product given to severely malnourished patients, and has designed procedures to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the programme.

Shylet Kupara and her husband run a small tailoring business from their home in Harare. Since Shylet tested HIV positive three months ago, she has lost weight - and also the strength and energy to sew. "Every day I wish I could wake up and be able to work, to add something to my life, but the illness brings me down," she says.

His is a story that stays with one for a long time. At 24, he is grossly underweight for his age and resembles a boy barely out of his teens. Jairos Chihwa, of Overspill in Epworth, a low income sprawling township 8km south west of the capital Harare, has been HIV positive since birth and it is all too easy to see that he has seen the ebb and flow of life and death in the suburbs.

HURUNGWE - For a heavily pregnant Tafadzwa Gwera (27) of Chiroti Village in Hurungwe, the monthly pilgrimage to Deve Clinic - some 400km north west of Harare the capital - is one she really looks forward to.

WFP's new Cash for Cereals programme is providing a vital backstop to poor Zimbabweans, hard hit by years of recurrent drought and the loss of remittances from migrant workers abroad. 

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.

Thirty million people assisted, 30 years of cooperation, US$30 million in donations - a photo exhibition held in Beijing offered a graphic chronicle of WFP's collaboration with the Chinese government in the fight against hunger and poverty.

Thousands of cholera patients and their caregivers in treatment centres across Zimbabwe are now benefiting from WFP food, which helps them fight the deadly disease.

The food situation in Zimbabwe has deteriorated more drastically than expected – due to worsening economic conditions, the cash crisis and also because the government did not import as much food as anticipated.

It is the lean season in Zimbabwe – the last few months before harvests arrive in April – and hunger levels are reaching a peak. WFP is targeting more than 5 million hungry people.