Overview
Since the popular revolution in 1991, Mali has exhibited strong developmental potential in the educational, agricultural and health sectors. While many of its neighbouring countries have experienced political turmoil, Mali has been led by democratically elected presidents for the past seventeen years. This political stability allowed the Government to develop strong national policies and programmes such as the ALO (Agricultural Law of Orientation), the Rice Initiative, an upcoming national school feeding programme, and a national protocol on fighting malnutrition.
Despite these initiatives and sustained efforts from the Government, Mali still faces significant challenges in key development sectors. For example, more than one fifth of school aged children do not attend school, of which approximately three fourths are girls. Regarding the national health situation, one third of children under the age of five suffer from chronic malnutrition, and thirteen percent are severely malnourished. These figures are further underscored by the fact that more than 69 percent of the population is estimated to live below the poverty line.
Mali is ranked 169 out of 177 countries in the 2008 UNDP Human Development Index, with poverty mainly affecting populations in rural areas of which the majority are women. Almost the entire rural population is dependent on rain fed agriculture and is exposed to a large number of constraints: limited arable land (over 60 percent of the land mass is desert or semi-desert), unpredictable weather, natural disasters, locust infestations, and environmental degradation. Several areas of the country, including the regions of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu, experience structural deficits in basic cereals.
WFP Activities
WFP has been present in Mali for 44 years. Many of the early projects supported by WFP related the drought relief, the development of the milk industry, technical support to stabilize & restructure the cereal markets and food aid for refugees and those affected by neighboring countries. WFP current operations aim to support the Government in meeting its development goals outlined in their Poverty Reduction Strategic Paper. While food assistance is provided to help poor, hungry households to take charge of their own development and to cope with natural disasters, it also fulfils five of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The Country Programme contributes to WFP's Strategic Objectives 2, 4 and 5 by focusing on three main outcomes: (i) enabling communities facing chronic food insecurity to create sustainable assets and reduce their vulnerability to natural disasters; (ii) enhancing sustainability of livelihoods for children (especially girls) of poor, food-insecure households through improved access to basic education and; (iii) strengthening the Government's capacity to prepare and implement food security programmes and food crisis prevention and mitigation programmes.
Through the PRRO (Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation), WFP supports the fight against malnutrition in regions identified by the Government to be most vulnerable. A focus is also put on supplementary feeding for malnourished children under the age of five, pregnant and nursing women, people living with HIV/AIDS, and those suffering from tuberculosis. Food for training programs offer instructional sessions on such topics as good hygiene and healthy cooking.
Through the Japanese bilateral project, small irrigation projects were developed and reinforced in remote villages located in the northern regions of Timbuktu and Mopti with the Food-for-work and Food-for-training programs.
WFP is also working to connect Malian farmers to markets through the Purchase for Progress initiative. The aim is to improve the revenue of small scale farmers, particularly women, through the creation of conditions that would help them to develop their crop management skills; improve the quality of food produced and promote local processing. This will realign the way WFP buys food to better address the root causes of hunger.
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