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Lesotho

WFP Lesotho Country Brief, January 2017

Attachments

Highlights

  • In January, WFP assisted 153,000 food insecure people through cash and food transfers.

  • Plans are underway to source maize meal for the school feeding programme locally; a proportion of the food is planned to be sourced from smallholder farmers.

  • WFP provided mobile devices to Lesotho Meteorological Services (LMS) to enable the Government to collect and disseminate real time weather data.

Operational Updates

  • In January 2017, WFP assisted 153,000 food insecure people through cash and food transfers, under the relief component.

  • WFP is finalizing community action plans for the resilience based activities in Quthing and Mohale’s Hoek districts. Through contributions from Canada, WFP will support food insecure people through cash assistance for building community assets such as dams for domestic and irrigation purposes. Activities will be implemented in partnership with Lesotho Standard Bank for six months starting in March 2017.

  • As the current agreements expire on 31 March, discussions are underway between WFP, World Vision and the Red Cross to extend partnership agreements until June 2017. The Red Cross implements cash based transfer activities in partnership with Standard Bank, while World Vision carries out food distributions.

  • WFP has launched a tender for the construction of 12 school kitchens and storerooms for Phase V of the infrastructure development project. The project aims to improve school feeding and storage facilities for public primary schools located in the remote highlands areas. By December 2016, 56 kitchens and stores had been completed, while eight were at various stages of construction; 12 are at the procurement stage.

  • WFP plans to source maize meal for the school feeding programme locally and in partnership with Lesotho Flour Millers allocate a proportion of the food needs to be sourced from smallholder farmers.
    The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and other key ministries will participate in the mobilization and training of smallholder farmers.