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Malawi + 1 more

WFP Malawi Country Brief, May 2018

Attachments

In Numbers

  • 35,272 refugees benefited from general food distribution in Luwani and Dzaleka camps

  • 884,522 children benefiting from school meals in 13 food insecure districts

  • 88,000 people suffering from acute malnutrition received nutrition treatment

  • 3,500 mt of food assistance distributed

Operational Context

Malawi is a small landlocked country in Sub-Saharan Africa with a population expanding rapidly at 3 percent per year. With the majority of livelihoods dependent on agriculture, the population is highly vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters.

Malawi’s challenges are compounded by a volatile economy, high rates of HIV infection (at 8.8 percent), low primary school completion rate (at 51 percent) and chronic under-nutrition (at 37 percent for children under five). Given these challenges, WFP’s operations work to support the Government in attaining a food and nutrition secure and resilient future, which is guided by the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals with a particular emphasis on reaching zero hunger (SDG 2).

WFP has been present in Malawi since 1965.

Operational Updates

Refugee Programme:

  • The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) projects an additional influx of asylum seekers of approximately 10,000 people into Malawi in 2018. In April in Luwani and Dzaleka camps, a total of 35,272 refugees, of whom 18,511 were children below 18 years of age, benefited from general food distribution. Thanks to USAID’s support, WFP was able to distribute full rations in May. However, the programme still requires USD 1.2 million to provide the required food assistance from September to December 2018.

Resilience Programme:

  • The 2017/2018 cycle of implementation of food assistance for assets (FFA) ended in March 2018, reaching 132,000 households. The next cycle is planned for July 2018.
    Participants worked mainly on assets appropriate for the wet season, such as the planting of assorted tree and fruit seedlings in degraded areas and around public institutions. Planning for dry season activities has begun, including irrigation systems and land resource management, among others. Two irrigation schemes were completed in Nsanje, while another two in Zomba and two in Chikwawa district are still under construction.

  • On 17 May, in Blantyre district, the Vice President presided over an insurance pay-out to R4 Rural Resilience Initiative beneficiaries. This was a recognition of the innovative resilience building interventions that WFP Malawi is implementing to counter the negative impact of climate related shocks. The event was also attended by directors from various government ministries, officials from the department of disaster management affairs, private insurance market players (insurance association), NGOs working with WFP and Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) supporting the implementation of the financial services interventions.

  • DFID provided USD 9.2 million for integrated resilience building activities for implementation between July and December 2018 which will see a scale-up of activities.

  • Under climate services, farmers continued to receive short-term weather alerts accompanied by agroadvisories relating to post-harvest handling, winter production, marketing and nutrition. The messages were disseminated to farmers using radio, extension officers and text messaging. WFP Malawi continues to engage Farm Radio Trust (FRT) in dissemination of messages and a new agreement is being drafted to include messages which will be developed by WFP in collaboration with FRT for integration into the radio show alongside the weather and climate information.

  • The Purchase for Progress (P4P) programme engaged four partners to support farmer organization growth, supporting the demand side of the Home-Grown School Meals (HGSM) programme in production and market access.

Lean Season Response:

  • WFP is supporting the Government to carry out a Joint Emergency Food Assistance Programme (JEFAP) to determine communities’ perceptions of the new guidelines that were rolled out during the 2017/18 Lean Season Response.

School Meals Programme:

  • WFP continued to provide school meals through the Centralised Model (CM) and Home-Grown School Meals (HGSM) programme to almost 1 million primary and pre-primary students in 13 food insecure districts.

  • With support from the Government of Norway, the UN Joint Programme on Girls Education (JPGE) continues to be implemented, with Phase 2 of the programme now extending to reach 169 schools.

  • The school meals programme is currently facing a funding gap of USD 1.3 million which could affect the delivery of school meals to almost 1 million children during the lean season (November to March) when most children’s single meal comes from school meals.

Nutrition programme:

  • The implementation of the pilot project for the prevention of stunting ended in April. Results showed that the programme achieved its goals of improving the nutritional and health status of children during the first 1,000 days. There was evidence that the programme improved weight gain and reduced wasting and underweight among children aged 6 to 23 months. Benefits to linear growth were evident in the longitudinal assessment of a cohort of children followed from 6 through 23 months of age who went through the entire planned duration of the programme.

  • WFP is expanding its micronutrient powders support programme, from one to four districts, with a recent contribution of USD 1 million from Japan.
    The programme will reach 83,304 children under the age of 2 years.

  • The nutrition programme is facing a funding gap of USD 3 million for 2018 following the approval of a DFID funding proposal amounting to USD 3.1 million to support Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) between June 2018 and March 2019.

Food Security Update

  • Agriculture Production Estimates Survey (APES) results for the 2017/2018 agricultural season showed that maize production (Malawi’s main staple) was projected to decrease from 3.4 million to 2.8 million metric tons. This represents a 19 percent decrease compared to the third-round crop estimate of 2016/2017 and about a 13 percent deficit of the national requirement of 3.2 million metric tons.

  • Approximately 270,180 hectares (ha) of crop belonging to 707,389 farming households have been severely affected by dry spells. In addition, 292,000 ha have been affected by the Fall Armyworm as of 08 March.

  • However, the current low maize prices and availability of stocks on the market (largely due to good production and carryover stocks from last year) will limit the negative impact in the most affected districts.

  • Ample maize supplies continue to drive national grain prices to relatively stable prices with an average of MK 94 per kilogram being observed in the last week of May. The current prices are 26 percent below the three-year average and 15 percent below the five-year average.