WFP assists poor farmers

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has provided Ethiopia’s agriculture ministry with equipment worth US $1.2 million to help improve the lives of impoverished farmers. "These donations will benefit over one million people out of which 40 percent are women," said the WFP head in Ethiopia, Georgia Shaver. "They will help build assets for the poor and enable transitions to more sustainable livelihoods through community based planning, technical training and capacity support." The equipment being supplied by WFP includes light vehicles, motorcycles and agricultural hand-tools as well as office and design equipment. Ethiopia has received massive pledges of food to tackle the severe drought that has affected one-fifth of the population, but so far funding for non-food items has been low. The equipment will be donated to the five regions hardest hit by the drought - Amhara, Dire-Dawa, Tigray, Oromiya, and the Southern Nations', Nationalities' and Peoples' Region. It will be used to support employment-generation schemes where hard-up farmers help their communities to improve their land and are paid back in food. An additional $550,660 will also be used to improve the skills of government officials working in the five regions.