World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

In Mozambique, WFP provides nutritional food to help ease the burden of high rates of both malnutrition and HIV. This food helps twins like Sandra and Guida regain their health.

WFP has a wide variety of innovative tools with which to address the causes of hunger. Often hunger solutions require thinking outside the box, especially when addressing multi-causal challenges such as chronic malnutrition.  But here is a clever piece of kit that involves 'inside the box' thinking. Not only does it feature an attractive design...it also offers a creative solution for some pressing challenges in the agricultural sector. 

Micronutrient deficiencies, which are common in Mozambique, represent a largely hidden but often devastating form of malnutrition. In March, the Government of Mozambique launched the national food fortification programme aimed at improving the overall health of Mozambicans, especially vulnerable groups, by reducing vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

Despite an excellent harvest of rice in the fields, Joana Latila and her husband, who support four grandchildren, found themselves without immediate access to food.

WFP is working to provide emergency food assistance to some 83,000 people affected by cyclones and severe flooding in Mozambique. Distributions started in early February in central Zambezia province.

Mozambique is no stranger to floods.  Twelve years ago, flood waters killed hundreds of people in the central region of the country. This time around, Mozambique was better prepared.

High food prices over the past year and growing concern over the effects of climate change have combined to put global food security at the top of the international agenda. A growing consensus among experts and policy makers is that a part of that solution lies in the hands of smallholder farmers.

The World Food Programme has joined a new action plan by the Mozambican government to bring down one of Africa's highest rates of chronic malnutrition.

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.

"Now that I have a secure buyer, I will grow a lot more beans,” says one farmer who is benefitting from WFP's innovative Purchase for Progress (P4P) programme.