Since 2018, WFP has worked closely with national governments and partners on an integrated resilience programme in the Sahel countries including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Local communities and WFP have laid the foundations for healthy, revitalised food systems that allow access to locally grown and nutritious food.
Thanks to sustained donor funding, more than 290,000 hectares of degraded land have been restored and four million people have benefitted from resilience support in over 3,200 villages across the five countries. Families have been equipped with the tools, techniques and infrastructure they need to break the vicious cycle of poverty, while learning to adapt to the increasing impacts of climate change and conflict. Healthy ecosystems and increased incomes have enabled families to send their children to school and benefit from better access to health and nutrition services.
In Niger alone, half a million people supported by WFP's resilience programme no longer required humanitarian assistance in 2022 and 2023, resulting in cost savings of US$ 54 million on the government budget for emergency response during the lean season. This is a major milestone in a country where 3.2 million women, men and children (12% of the population) are projected to face acute hunger during the 2024 June-August lean season.
"Now is the time to step up support not roll it back. Life-saving assistance to crisis-affected communities is essential, but increasingly not enough," said Margot Van der Velden, WFP's acting Regional Director for Western Africa.
"We need to collectively ensure that life-saving responses are complemented by longer-term investments in community resilience that prevent and mitigate the impact of crises, reduce humanitarian needs and pave the way for sustainable solutions to hunger and malnutrition," she added.
Despite its positive impact on families and communities, WFP's integrated resilience programme across the Sahel is at imminent risk of being suspended due to lack of funding for activities such as restoring degraded land, rehabilitating water ponds, and building community infrastructure. From March 2024 onward, WFP will be forced to reduce or stop resilience activities across the Sahel, and particularly in Niger.
In such volatile and fragile environments, any disruption to resilience-building efforts can drastically affect the food security of rural families, with agricultural production likely to decline, assets depleted, and incomes lost. A decade of hard-won gains may rapidly unravel, putting the livelihoods of millions at risk. This is particularly worrying as hunger and malnutrition are already on the rise in the region due to climate change and persistent conflicts, which have forced millions of people from their homes, off their farms, and across borders.
The Sahel region is home to 8.2 million people internally displaced by conflict while ongoing violence in neighbouring Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Nigeria has forced more than one million refugees into Chad, making it the world's fifth largest refugee host country. Furthermore, the November 2023 Cadre Harmonisé food security analysis projected that nearly 50 million people in West and Central Africa will be unable to meet their basic food needs during the June-August 2024 lean season. This represents a four-fold increase in just five years.
"Building resilient communities is a cost-efficient and sustainable solution to food insecurity and malnutrition in the Sahel. As needs rise and humanitarian funds shrink, we must sustain investment in community resilience as a pathway to social cohesion and stability in the Sahel" Van der Velden insisted.
To sustain its resilience-building support across the region, WFP requires US$183.1 million for the next 12 months.
