World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The US has provided food items worth $7m (about sh14b) to the drought-affected region of Karamoja to feed 266,000 people. The contribution will be delivered through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to support the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP).

The United States Government is providing food items worth $7 million to the drought-affected region of Karamoja.(..)USAID/Uganda Mission Director David Eckerson said this $7 million contribution will allow the World Food Program to continue its distribution of food rations to the most vulnerable populations in Karamoja, and complements ongoing U.S. Government support for school meals for 97,500 children.

Eastern Uganda's mountainous district of Kapchorwa has huge agricultural potential, but farmers perennially suffer crop losses due to vermin, poor or non-existent storage and drying facilities, and lack of transport (..). Vincent Rubarema, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries, recently accompanied officials from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to Kapchorwa where a five-year initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is trying to address some of the problems.

In a press release, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) attributed the high food prices in 2008 partly to the “competition (for land) between biofuels and food.” (..) Stanlake Samkange, the WFP country director, said in an exclusive interview that although jatropha was a cash crop, there was need to balance it with food production. “Biofuels is not a bad move par se, but we want to be assured that food security will be guaranteed,” he noted.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has launched a stove project worth $1m (about sh1.8b) The fuel-efficient and improved mud stoves, which use less firewood, are expected to reduce risks of rape and attacks on women in the Internally Displaced Persons’(IDP) camps in Uganda and Sudan.

The World Food Programme (WFP) bought $50m (about sh94.3b) food in Uganda last year, according to Stanlake Samkange, the country director. (..) “WFP has been spending $50m annually on buying food in the recent years. Buying local food has direct benefits for Uganda in terms of increasing agricultural productivity and boosting economic growth,” Samkange noted (..).

As the sun's rays find their way into David Oguti's house through tiny holes in the iron roof, he turns once and gets out of bed (..). According to Food Agriculture Oganisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), about seven million people faced varying degrees of food insecurity in the last few months.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has entered into partnership with Sasakawa Global 2000 to train farmers on post-harvest handling practices. The first major partnership under the “purchase for progress (P4P initiative is targeting at least 3,200 farmers in Busoga and Lango regions.

Uganda sees the amount of maize handled on its commodities exchange rising by 150% to 10,000 metric tonnes in 2010, boosting the exchange which mostly trades the grain (..) UN World Food Programme buys about 90% of the maize handled at the exchange.

The United Nations on Wednesday launched a pilot project to provide fuel-efficient stoves to some 150,000 women in Sudan and Uganda to cut the risks of murder, rape and other violence they face in gathering firewood, while at the same time protecting the environment. The SAFE stoves initiative, organized by the WFP and other UN agencies, will be rolled out next year to reach eventually up to 6 million refugees, IDPs and returnees in 36 nations, where they are forced to walk further and further into the bush into unsafe areas to collect firewood, UN officials said here.