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 Annual Evaluation Report for 2010 focuses on operational issues arising from evaluations of country portfolios and operations, and impact evaluations of selected school feeding programmes.

The findings reaffirm WFP’s corporate areas of strength in responding to emergencies under the most difficult circumstances and in providing school feeding, as one of the Programme’s flagship programmes. However, impact evaluations of these programmes also showed the importance of implementing school feeding in cooperation with partners who invest in education sector improvements. Areas where largest improvements can be made relate to food-for-work, where funding often is curtailed and thus strategic objectives moved beyond reach, and nutrition where the ambiguous objectives and small size of programmes make it difficult to demonstrate results.

This strategic evaluation analysed the role of WFP in ending long-term hunger. Three activities were identified to contribute to that goal: MCHN,SF and FFW/A.  

Based on overall evaluation findings, the team concluded that long-term hunger cannot be tackled in isolation.  This conclusion led to one of the six recommendations; WFP should approach hunger holistically, integrating short-term and long-term hunger solutions.  The other five recommendations are related to each of the five evaluation questions, common to all four strategic evaluations in this series.