World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

World food prices rose to a record high last month on higher sugar, grain and oilseed costs and food prices may rise more unless the world grain crop increases "significantly" this year. Despite the bleak outlook the agricultural sector in Africa is receiving a significant boost. Last year the World Food Programme purchased 328 million US dollars worth of food from countries in Africa and the number is set to grow during the course of this year.

The government of Japan has extended assistance worth $7m (about Shs16 billion) to Uganda through the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the World Food Programme. The grant will be used to protect vulnerable population, especially those likely to be affected by the recent erratic weather patterns in the country.

The United Nations’ World Food Programme said it plans to more than double food purchases in Uganda next year to meet humanitarian needs in neighboring countries. The Rome-based agency may raise its budget for food purchases in Uganda to $100 million from about $40 million this year, Stanlake Samkange, the WFP country director in Uganda, said today in an interview in the capital, Kampala.

Addressing a rally in Kaabong district on Sunday, President Yoweri Museveni announced that the Government will, in collaboration with the World Food Programme, provide lunch for school-going children in Karamoja until the region develops the capacity to provide school lunch for the children.

THE US ambassador to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has encouraged former internally displace people (IDPs) in northern Uganda to adopt modern farming for sale to the World Food Programme.

THE Government will provide lunch to all school going children in Karamoja region, President Yoweri Museveni has said. He said this would be done until the Karimojong develop the capacity to provide school lunch for the children. While addressing a rally in Kaabong town council, Kaabong district on Sunday, Museveni said Government would continue to implement the feeding policy in collaboration with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

FARMERS in Bugiri district are jubilating after acquiring a satellite grain collection centre. (..) The grain centre was constructed with support from the World Food Programme (WFP). While on an inspection tour, Ertharin Cousin, the US ambassador to the WFP and the Food and Agricultural Organisation, said the WFP wanted to set up 60 such satellite collection points nationwide in the next two years.

The government has moved to assess the situation following reports of outbreak of a deadly disease suspected to be Ebola in some districts in Uganda (..) Meanwhile World Food Program has already donated maize, beans and cooking oil to support those in the isolation ward at Kalongo Hospital.

The World Food Programme's experience is a particularly salutary one. The organisation has been active in Karamoja for four decades and by 2008, in the third year of a drought, was feeding 80% of the population. However, the huge operation was chaotic. The lists of recipients included non-existent "ghost names", distributions were mobbed, and even when the Karamojong received their rations, they risked being robbed on the way home. "In a way, food distribution made some of the beneficiaries targets," admitted Gilbert Buzu, the WFP's head of office in Kotido.

For long, smallholder farmers have suffered under the exploitation of merchants, who fail to rightly pay due prices for their produces.(..) The system has so far proved to be convenient for both the buyers and the sellers; no wonder international agencies like UN's World Food Programme is in business with the licensed warehouses. During a tour to some of the warehouse stores in Jinja recently, Ms Casar Gina, the deputy executive director, resource management of WFP told farmers that the UN agency was looking at commercialisation of smallholder agriculture as a core pillar of poverty reduction.