World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

WFP assists African governments and communities to implement comprehensive, country-led, programmes to tackle hunger the world’s greatest solvable problem. In 2012, out of a total US$4.2 billion expenditure, two thirds (US$2.7 billion) was allocated to Africa. WFP is the world’s biggest buyer of food for humanitarian operations and it is the largest single purchaser of food assistance in Africa, but we do not work alone. This edition of WFP in Africa highlights our partnerships throughout the continent, illustrating the importance of working together to reach shared goals and objectives.

The P4P Primer describes the evolution of the P4P pilot during the first three years of implementation. It provides the internal and external background and context for P4P, reviews P4P in detail (including discussions of its theoretical foundations, main components and underlying assumptions), and describes selected topics in the design of P4P (including establishing targets, partnerships and capacity-building activities, the roles of government and WFP, and gender strategies). Subsequent chapters examine risks, challenges and emerging lessons.

 This report presents the key findings, conclusions and recommendations of the mid-term strategic evaluationof the WFP Purchase for Progress Initiative (P4P). P4P is a five-year pilot initiative launched in 2008 to pilot and learn from innovative programme and food procurement activities that have the best potential to stimulate agricultural and market development in a way that maximises benefits to low-income smallholder farmers. It seeks to use WFP’s demand platform to leverage smallholder agricultural growth in some of the world’s poorest countries through supply chain reforms.This evaluation was conducted by the Overseas Development Institute(ODI) in 2011. 

Commissioned by WFP’s Executive Board when approving the Policy, this early evaluation assessed: the quality of the Policy itself; results so far; and the factors influencing these results/progress in implementation.

The Policy was timely, relevant and introduced some important new elements, based on sound principles. There are many positive features in implementation so far, but not as much tangible progress as might have been hoped, due to inherent weaknesses in the Policy and slow implementation of the necessary changes to WFP systems, incentives and procedures.

This report presents the key findings, conclusions and recommendations of the mid-term strategic evaluation of the WFP Purchase for Progress Initiative (P4P). P4P is a five-year pilot initiative launched in 2008 to pilot and learn from innovative programme and food procurement activities that have the best potential to stimulate agricultural and market development in a way that maximises benefits to low-income smallholder farmers. It seeks to use WFP’s demand platform to leverage smallholder agricultural growth in some of the world’s poorest countries through supply chain reforms.This evaluation was conducted by the Overseas Development Institute(ODI) in 2011.

Learn more details about the specific approaches in the P4P pilot countries.