World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

As Zimbabwe braces for the worst 'hunger season' in years, WFP is preparing food and cash distributions to help farmers like Mavis Mukarati hold on to her goats.

Like many single mothers who have been outcast after testing HIV positive, Tambudzai has had a tough time. She was born to poor parents and has lived much of her life on the margins of society. But one day an outreach worker knocked on her door and advised her to seek help. She now receives free anti-retroviral treatment and counselling at a clinic in her village. 

For the last four months, Marble's mode of transport was a wheelbarrow pushed by her elderly mother. It took two hours each way from their village to the nearest clinic but Marble’s illness gave them few alternatives. Now she is walking again. Under the shade of a lemon tree in the clinic's courtyard, whilst waiting their turn to collect her monthly food rations from WFP, the two women recount their trials and eventual triumph as Marble’s health improved.

Harare - Persistent hunger and under-nutrition continue to be major obstacles to development and economic growth in Zimbabwe, especially among the poor. A third of Zimbabwe’s children between six months and five years are short for their age and hence more prone to disease. The United Nations, through its specialist agencies- WFP, UNICEF, WHO and FAO - has supported the development of the Food and Nutrition Security Policy for Zimbabwe. The policy, launched in Harare on 16 May 2013 by the President of Zimbabwe, H.E Robert Mugabe, seeks to promote adequate food and nutrition security for all, particularly amongst the poor whose lives are most vulnerable to the dangers and deprivations caused by hunger and malnutrition.

With a shift in focus towards productive asset creation, WFP uses food or cash as an incentive for people to work on community projects that will help them grow out of poverty and into food security for their families.

On January 22, Saliwe Sithole woke up surrounded by water as far as her eyes could see. Flash floods in parts of Zimbabwe washed away homes and crops, killing 30 people and countless animals in January. The government, in partnership with humanitarian agencies including WFP, responded by providing shelter, food and blankets to ensure that the basic needs of the flood victims were covered.

With a hoe in one hand and old rosary beads clutched in the other, Netsai Dumba (29) heads in the blazing heat to her empty field. Like many other small-holder farmers, she took a gamble by planting during the late rains, using money borrowed from a money lender  to buy seed and fertilizer.

Mothers and grandmothers around the world tend to want to feed their families. For Sakina Chikwanda in Zimbabwe, this seemed an impossibility following drought in parts of the country. The World Food Programme (WFP) has partnered with the Government of Zimbabwe to ensure those most vulnerable have enough to eat until the next harvest.

More than a million Zimbabweans are estimated to be living in South Africa, many of them without documentation. A special amnesty gave undocumented migrants a year to regularize their stay, and after the amnesty expired in late 2011, South Africa resumed deportation of those who failed to do so. Several thousand Zimbabweans are repatriated every month. At the Beitbridge border post, WFP has been providing them with hot meals to help sustain them through the journey home. 

Matabeleland in Zimbabwe is not known for its bumper harvests but this year, for the first time in many years, 100 smallholder farmers from Insiza have managed to harvest enough maize for themselves and to sell some despite a largely poor agricultural season.