Madagascar

The Grand Sud region has been struck by back-to-back droughts during the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 rainy seasons. This has had a disastrous impact on agriculture and forced people to resort to desperate survival measures, such as eating locusts, raw red cactus fruits or wild leaves. The food security analysis (IPC) conducted in December 2021 revealed that 1.47 million people in the region need urgent assistance (IPC Phase 3 or above).

Farming, fishing and forestry form the backbone of the Malagasy economy. Agriculture is dominated by rain-fed small-scale subsistence farming: seven out of 10 smallholder farmers own no more than 1.2 hectares of land. Rice is the main staple food and the island’s main crop, but not enough is produced to satisfy the national demand. Agricultural production remains low due to factors such as: limited access to agricultural productive assets, credit and markets; gender inequality limiting women and girls’ access to land; poor post-harvest techniques; inadequate natural resources management; and lack of adequate access to markets for smallholder farmers.     

Madagascar is among the ten countries most vulnerable to disasters and is considered to be the most cyclone-exposed country in Africa. A quarter of the population lives in areas highly prone to cyclones, floods or drought. Climate change and environmental degradation exacerbate these risks while the increasing fragility of the ecosystem intensifies vulnerability to shocks and food insecurity. Deforestation has become a major concern: 90 percent of Madagascar’s original rainforests have been lost to logging, charcoal-making and slash-and-burn agriculture.

In 2022, several tropical cyclones hit Madagascar, claiming scores of lives, destroying houses and essential infrastructure, displacing people and inundating croplands just weeks away from harvest. Those storms are threatening the food security of the populations and bringing a risk of inflation of food staples.

In Madagascar, the World Food Programme (WFP) addresses the immediate food needs of disaster-affected vulnerable populations through unconditional food assistance.  WFP also strengthens communities’ resilience through conditional assistance, distributing food for community assets creation or rehabilitation and supporting the access of smallholder farmers to markets. We provide nutritional support to children, pregnant women and girls and nursing mothers for the prevention of acute malnutrition, while also supporting the treatment of moderate acute malnutrition and improving educational outcomes by ensuring child have access to nutritious food through its school meals programme.

To ensure the sustainability of its interventions, WFP strengthens the capacities of the Government of Madagascar through the provision of material and technical assistance and joint assessments and evaluations in the areas of food security and nutrition as well as Disaster Risk Reduction.

WFP’s work is concentrated in the disaster-affected southern, south-western and south-eastern regions.