WFP operations continue to face “serious” food shortage

World Food Programme (WFP) operations in Rwanda have continued to be hampered by a serious shortage of food commodities during April, according to the WFP’s monthly report from Kigali. The current pipeline problems facing WFP- Rwanda have forced some nutrition centers to provide smaller rations for therapeutic- and supplementary-feeding programmes. Staff at these centres said they had insufficient cereals to supply therapeutic-feeding patients, and were using porridge prepared for the supplementary-feeding programme. Due to “a complete pipeline rupture”, WFP is substituting corn-soya blend (CSB) requirements with maize meal. However, WFP is also facing an acute shortage of maize meal for nutrition and refugee programmes. A WFP assessment mission to the provinces of Kibungo, Kigali Rural (Bugesera Region), and Umutara, the regions hardest hit by last year’s drought, found that with the exception of Bugesera, the harvest of January had been relatively good, and that rains had been favourable to crop development so far. In the most affected area of Kigali Rural, farmers have planted early, and their May sorghum and bean harvests are expected to be good if rains continue. Nevertheless, WFP found that a percentage of households were so severely affected by the drought that, to cope with hunger, they had had to sell assets such as goats and iron roofing sheets. WFP warned that this population would remain highly vulnerable, and said that most of Bugesera remained vulnerable to food insecurity as a result of insufficient household food reserves following three years of consecutive poor harvests. The mission also found that the rates of child malnutrition in parts of Bugesera had not declined during the last six months, noting that an epidemic of a virulent strain of malaria had contributed to the static malnutrition situation. The mission recommended that recovery programmes should focus on reducing food shortages in the long run through interventions such as soil-erosion control, agricultural intensification, and poverty alleviation. During the month of April, WFP-Rwanda distributed 1,094 mt of food aid to 86,634 beneficiaries.