NGO buys food from refugee farmers

An Italian NGO, Cooperazione Internazionale (COOPI), has received the local equivalent of US $30,000 to buy food from Democratic Republic of the Congo refugee farmers in Camp Molangue for distribution to the vulnerable, Edoardo Pelamatti, the head of the organisation's field office in Molangue, told IRIN on Monday. He said the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) disbursed the 18 million francs CFA on Friday. From this, COOPI will buy 84 mt of maize grain, 16 mt of beans and 3.5 mt of oil from the refugee farmers, while 2.1 mt of salt, and 2.8 mt of sugar will be bought in local markets. Pelamatti said the food would be distributed to 600 vulnerable people among the 2,700 refugees in Molangue, 140 km south of Bangui, the capital. Each person would receive 600g of maize, 120g of beans, 15g of salt, 20g of sugar and 25g of palm oil per day, until December. He added that COOPI would organise community food-for-work projects whereby each participant would receive 300g of maize grain per day. "We are going to set up a refectory for 1,800 school children," Pelamatti said. COOPI, he said, would also buy 30 percent of the food from CAR nationals in surrounding villages who have integrated refugees' cooperatives. "We have to keep the economic balance between the refugees and the nationals," he said. DRC refugees have received no food aid since January 2003, when the UN World Food Programme suspended distribution in the camp. However, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has provided seeds and the UNHCR has bought farmland for the refugees who have produced surplus food. "We have harvested 543 mt of maize this season," Faustin Mabele, a refugee agronomist, told IRIN on Monday. He was chosen by other refugee farmers to go to Bangui to find buyers for the remaining 479 mt. He said that the 30 farming cooperatives had shared the 84 mt to be purchased by COOPI and that each farmer would sell 58 kg for 5,800 francs (about $10). Mabele said the money raised would enable the refugees to renew the thatched roofs of their mud-walled huts and buy other household goods. He said the bumper harvest had encouraged the refugees to farm during the current season that ends in December. "We have difficulty finding sacks to store our harvests," Mabele added. Meanwhile, COOPI has started a poultry farm project worth 3.7 million francs CFA ($6.200) to help the refugees diversify their income.