World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The drought in the Sahel poses a significant logistical challenge to the World Food Programme. The region's infrastructure, ports and inland transport corridors have difficulty absorbing the quantities of humanitarian assistance required to reach people in need. In order to meet the immediate transport and storage needs, WFP Mauritania, borrowed 10 trucks from WFP Liberia to assist in the transportation of commodities for WFP operations in addition to the transportation needs of the wider humanitarian community.

10 trucks of 7 metric ton capacity arrived in Nouakchott on Monday, 07 May 2012. They have been offloaded and delivered to WFP. These trucks will be primarily sent to Nema and Bassikounou and support the logistics operations in the M'bera camp in the southeast of the country

WFP is head of the Logistics Cluster, which has been launched in Mauritania to coordinate the overall storage and delivery of humanitarian aid to the vulnerable populations of Mauritania. Logistical support to the humanitarian community includes: reception capacity, storage, transportation, infrastructure rehabilitation and air transportation through the UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS).
 

The augumentation of WFP ground capacity to respond to the crisis in Mauritania will serve not only to transport food commodities to the areas of intervention but also non-food items and mobile warehouses, which will allow food to be prepositioned in the M'bera camp before the rainy season in June when the roads will be impassable.