World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Rwanda will back Australia's bid for a United Nations Security Council seat, while Australia will support Rwanda's bid to join the commonwealth. (..) Australia will provide an additional $3 million to the UN World Food Program and $2.5 million to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to assist hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Many have fled into Rwanda.

Primary school pupils, their parents and teachers in Bugesera district, on Monday praised the World Food Programme (WFP) supported school feeding scheme. This was noted while The New Times followed a day-long joint agency - WFP, USDA and USAID field visit to three WFP assisted primary schools - Mayange A, Biharagu and Nyakayaga, in Bugesera district.

The new Country Director and Representative of World Food Programme (WFP), Abdoulaye Balde, yesterday presented his credentials to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rosemary Museminali. Balde, a Senegalese national, will be responsible for all WFP Rwanda programmes and operations. According to a statement issued by the WFP, Balde is expected to lead the WFP Rwanda team in implementing the three-year corporate strategic plan of 2008-2011; which will see WFP embark on a historical shift from a food aid agency to a food assistance agency. “Our new strategy aims at reducing dependency through supporting governmental and global efforts to ensure long term solutions for food security,” Balde is quoted in the WFP statement as saying.

THE World Food Programme (WFP) has began buying food directly from small-holding farmers in Uganda to boost opportunities for poverty eradication. The UN food agency said in a statement yesterday that it bought $53m worth of food locally last year for recipients in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Eastern DR Congo. The statement said the agency plans to increase the purchases to more than $100m annually in three years. The country director, Stanlake Samkange, said WFP recently started buying food through the warehouse receipt system to increase direct assistance to small-scale farmers and support the Government poverty eradication efforts. “Buying food directly from small-scale farmers, especially at high prices, helps further by improving the quality of life for the poorest people,” Samkange said in the statement.