Malawi | World Food Programme

Malawi is a  small, landlocked country in sub-Saharan Africa with a rapidly expanding population. Most livelihoods depend on rain-fed agriculture, making the population highly vulnerable to disasters – particularly droughts and cyclone-induced floods.

The country faces cyclical food insecurity due to climate shocks. In February 2024, a long dry spell induced by El Niño affected 44 percent of the maize crop and left 5.7 million people acutely food insecure.

Millions are still struggling to recover from that ordeal, with families resorting to negative coping strategies like pulling children out of school to work or selling critical household assets.

The 2024 drought followed a series of disasters, including Tropical Storm Ana in 2022 and Tropical Cyclone Freddy in 2023.  These challenges are exacerbated by weak economic growth, high debt, low primary school completion, high prevalence of stunting (impaired growth due to malnutrition) and a high HIV and AIDS infection rate.

While the World Food Programme (WFP) has preferred cash transfers over food distributions in recent years, the severity of shortages both in Malawi and the region has meant a shift to imported food.

In the 2024-2025 lean season response, WFP  has reached 1.6 million people with food distributions and cash transfers.

Since September 2024, WFP and UNICEF, working with the Ministry of Health, have been supporting the treatment of malnutrition by providing therapeutic food. This targets children aged 6 to 59 months, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and people living with HIV and tuberculosis.

Over 39,700 people have been treated for moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) in seven districts, while more than 30,700 have received treatment for severe acute malnutrition (SAM) across Malawi, achieving 89 percent recovery rate for MAM patients and 91 percent for SAM patients.

What the World Food Programme is doing in Malawi

Food assistance: WFP supports the Government in responding to emergencies, by providing food and cash-based transfers, including to refugees. WFP also provides cash-based transfers to 58,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Dzaleka refugee camp, in partnership with UNHCR. WFP distributed over 38,500 metric tons of food and transferred US$3.3 million to people under the El Niño emergency response. This effort complemented the Government’s national response plan, supported by donor commitments. Food distributions included maize, malnutrition treatment (fortified cereal) and school meals, for around 1.6 million people. 
School meals and nutrition: WFP supports education through the provision of daily nutritious meals to 825,000 schoolchildren in 788 primary schools and 140 pre-primary schools. From 2022, WFP implements a home-grown school feeding approach that uses fresh foods bought from over 35,000 smallholder farmers. WFP is also providing technical support to the Government to scale up the national school feeding programme. As part of the El Niño response, WFP extended school-meal programmes as emergency support to over 343,700 children and assisted the treatment of moderate acute malnutrition for 39,700 children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, people living with HIV and tuberculosis patients.  WFP promotes good nutrition and healthy behaviours in schools and communities by sharing practical nutrition and social behaviour change messages.
Livelihoods: WFP’s livelihoods interventions in Malawi focus on asset creation, climate-smart agriculture, increased access to finance (savings and loans), crop insurance, management of post-harvest losses, and linking smallholder farmers to markets. WFP is working with farmers to provide water for year-round crop production, and equipping communities with solar-powered irrigation and pumps. These are especially important due to climate shocks including dry spells, helping communities grow crops during the dry season to mitigate crop losses. 
Capacity strengthening: WFP provides technical assistance to emergency preparedness and response institutions in Malawi, aimed at enhancing the humanitarian response amid increasing climate-induced emergencies. This covers areas including coordination, weather forecasting, and monitoring of anticipatory action. WFP is supporting the Ministry of Health to improve warehouse good practices and data quality management, by providing supervision for health facilities. 
Supply chain services: WFP provides services to the national disaster management agency and humanitarian and development partners, through the Logistics Cluster, to enhance coordination and supply chain management. WFP also provides access to on-demand supply chain services to Government, humanitarian and development actors, to enhance their capacity to ensure more effective and efficient interventions.