hunger

There’s nothing easy about life in Kabul, but Mirwais Shinwary says he wouldn’t live anywhere else. After fleeing to Pakistan in the 1990s, he jumped at the chance to help rebuild his country and get his hands on some cutting-edge telecom gear as the leader of WFP’s crack IT unit.

West Africa Food Crisis

As a result of severe drought, the 2009 harvest in Niger produced less than a quarter of the country’s annual needs. Now half of all Nigeriens do not have enough food.

After 18 months in camps, many of the families displaced by conflict in Eastern Congo are keen to go home and restart their lives. Some are held back by fears that their lands are still not free from danger, others are taking the risk.WFP Executive Director Josette recently visited Katsiru in North Kivu and spoke to women who are staying and some who have returned.

WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran promised during a visit to the village of Ruhiira to double the amount of food that WFP buys from local women farmers. The beans produced in this southern village -- part of the Millennium Village Project -- go to feed hungry children in the north.

During the second leg of her four-nation trip to Africa, WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeeran visited North Kivu in the east of Democratric Republic of Congo, highlighting the need for support and security to allow displaced Congolese to rebuild their lives.

Timor-Leste's first ever food processing plant is now turning out blended foods tailored to the nutritional needs of the poor Southeast Asian nation.  The new plant, set up with crucial input from WFP, will cut the cost of distributing fortified foods, create jobs and provide a market for small farmers.

Former US Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern marked his 88th birthday recently with a skydive to raise awareness about hunger. It was the first ever skydive for the WFP ambassador, who once piloted planes for the US Air Force.

Baladi bread is the backbone of the Egyptian diet. Cheap, filling and ingrained into Egypt’s culture, it’s also the only food most poor Egyptians can afford. That’s why WFP and partners are enriching it with micronutrients to bring proper nutrition into the homes over 50 million people. Watch video

Hunger is an ever-present problem in extremely poor countries like Niger, but a hard drought last year has made a bad situation immeasurably worse. WFP’s Director for West Africa, Thomas Yanga, explains why so many people in Niger are going hungry and what’s being done to help them.

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ROME – WFP on Tuesday announced a massive scale-up of food assistance to the west African state of Niger in order to feed some eight million people faced with hunger and malnutrition in the wake of a severe drought.