World Vision provides food aid in drought-stricken Nyamata

World Vision announced on Wednesday that it had been distributing 14.5 mt of food to 700 families in the drought-stricken Nyamata District of Kigali Rural Province in Rwanda. The distribution started in early August after World Vision found that about 12 families with children it sponsored had migrated to neighbouring villages. A rapid survey in Nyamata showed that about 8 percent of the 1,150 children World Vision supported in the area were malnourished. The NGO said that the Rwandan government, which had a policy against free food aid, approved a proposal to support the families of children cared for by World Vision, while the UN World Food Programme was encouraged to continue with its school feeding programme and food-for-work project. Nyamata Vice Mayor Theobald Kayigamba described the aid as timely because most of the crops that had been planted had withered. World Vision Programme Coordinator Peter Twahirwa said with the next rains due in October, his organisation was working on a food security and environment conservation proposal to secure funding for farm inputs, and to teach better farming techniques. In April 2003, the USAID Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS) reported a possible food crisis in low-altitude areas of Bugesera Region and in Kibungo Province in eastern Rwanda, particularly in the Mayange and Muyenzi sectors of Nyamata District, Kigali Rural Province, where high temperatures deplete soil humidity faster than in higher altitudes. At the time, FEWS said the season had started very late, with rainfall poor and erratic, causing sorghum to wither and bean cultivation to be delayed. On 7 August, WFP signed a US $35.4-million deal with the Rwandan government, under which WFP would deliver 53,566 mt of food over the next four years. The agency said it would also provide operational aid valued at $28.7 million over the same period. [See related item, "WFP in US $35 million agreement with Kigali"]