Located in southwestern Africa, Angola is a lower-middle-income, food-deficit country with a young and rapidly expanding population. More than half of the population live on less than US$3.65 per day. Despite progress in some sectors, Angola ranks 148th out of 193 on the 2025 Human Development Index, highlighting persistent challenges in education, health, and income inequality.  

Angola is facing significant economic and climate shocks, threatening both economic growth and food security, with rural communities being the most affected. The country is grappling with a prolonged drought, exacerbated by the El Niño event. This has resulted in below-average harvests, loss of income and assets, and water scarcity.  An estimated 2.2 million people are in need of assistance, including 1.8 million who are food insecure and 1.3 million who require nutrition support.  

Chronic malnutrition (stunting) affects 40 percent of children aged 6-59 months, while wasting (low height for weight) is at 5 percent. Malnutrition is driven by multiple factors, including limited access to nutritious foods, unsafe  drinking water, poor sanitation  and  hygiene, inadequate infant and child feeding practices, and lack of access to essential services, underscored by poverty.

Harnessing our expertise in emergency response, capacity strengthening and service provision, the World Food Programme (WFP) works with the Government of the Republic of Angola and a broad range of partners to support national development priorities, accelerating progress toward Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically Goal 2 (Zero Hunger) and Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). 

What the World Food Programme is doing in Angola

Refugee assistance
WFP provides food assistance to 6,300 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo residing in the Lóvua refugee settlement, to help them meet their basic food and nutrition needs. In collaboration with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the Government of Angola and other partners, WFP is also implementing resilience and livelihood support activities, reaching 1,200 refugees and host community members through the distribution of start-up kits as well as the provision of equipment and training on income-generating activities such as agriculture, beekeeping and fruit-tree planting. WFP plans to introduce other high-value production systems, such as fish farming, to help communities diversify their livelihoods, boost their income, strengthen their self-reliance and foster social cohesion.
Commodity vouchers
WFP, in coordination with the National Civil Protection Commission and other partners, is implementing a commodity voucher scheme to support nutritionally vulnerable and food-insecure households in some of the provinces hardest hit by the drought. As part of the El Niño response, WFP is providing vouchers to the families of children, and pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls diagnosed with acute malnutrition, reaching over 45,000 people to improve recovery rates and household food security and nutrition. To date, WFP has transferred around US$1 million to people through commodity vouchers. WFP contracts local retailers to ensure efficient, cost-effective, and timely delivery of commodities to households.
Nutrition
WFP implements targeted supplementary feeding and integrated nutrition support programmes to prevent and treat moderate acute malnutrition among children aged 6-59 months and pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls (PBWG). In 2024, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and other partners, WFP provided nutrition support to 48,000 children and PBWG in drought-affected areas and provinces with some of the highest rates of global acute malnutrition. Alongside the provision of life-saving specialized nutritious foods, nutrition equipment, and commodity vouchers, WFP delivers social and behaviour change communication messaging to communities and training to health workers, aimed at promoting healthy and nutritious practices. Nutrition is integrated across all WFP activities to address the root causes of malnutrition and enhance access to, and consumption of healthy, nutritious diets. Additionally, WFP provides technical assistance to the Ministry of Health in strengthening the governance, leadership, and management of the National Nutrition Programme, and advancing the food fortification agenda in the country.
School meals
WFP plans to restart its school meals programme to support primary school children in the most vulnerable areas. The school feeding programme helps boost retention rates, increase enrolment, and improve educational outcomes. WFP prioritizes the use of a home-grown school feeding approach that uses fresh foods purchased from local smallholder farmers. This improves their access to local markets, boosts agricultural production and ensures children have access to fresh, locally sourced, nutritious foods. WFP also provides policy support, technical assistance, and expertise to the Government of Angola, aiming to enhance the sustainability and scalability of the national school feeding programme.
Technical assistance
WFP contributes to strengthening Angola’s national capacities and advancing food security and nutrition priorities through the development of food security policies and strategies, capacity building for government staff, the establishment of coordination mechanisms, the provision of technical assistance, and the facilitation of South-South Cooperation in school feeding, food security and nutrition data analysis, and acute malnutrition response. In collaboration with the Government of Angola, WFP is scaling up efforts to promote sustainable access to water, boost agricultural production, and improve the livelihoods of communities in southern Angola affected by the prolonged drought and the El Niño event. WFP is providing solar-powered water supply and small-scale irrigation systems, as well as skills training and technical assistance to strengthen local value chains and create economic opportunities for smallholder farmers.
Service provision
WFP provides efficient, high-quality supply chain services to the Government of Angola and development and humanitarian actors. Through the Last-Mile Delivery (LMD) project, WFP acts as the logistical backbone for storing and delivering life-saving medical supplies for HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and COVID-19. This initiative reaches over 850 health facilities across Benguela, Cuanza Sul, and Bié provinces. Funded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the LMD project is implemented in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The project aims to support the Government’s efforts to improve access to essential health services for vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations while strengthening health supply chain systems.

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Partners and Donors

Government of the Republic of Angola Government of the Republic of Slovenia Japan Association for the World Food Programme Multilateral Funds United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Operations in Angola

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Contacts

Office

Condomínio Rosalinda, Edifício da ONU, 5º andar, Estrada Direita da Samba
Luanda
Angola

Phone
+244 2206430880 Ext: 3242
Email
inaara.gulamhussen@wfp.org
For media inquiries
inaara.gulamhussen@wfp.org
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