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Benin

WFP Benin Country Brief, June 2018

Attachments

In Numbers

  • 292.66 mt of food assistance distributed

  • US$ 2.81 m six months (May-October 2018) net funding requirements, representing 50% of total

  • 110,860 people assisted in June 2018

Operational Updates

  • Fifty-one years after settling in Benin, WFP and the Beninese government are updating their agreement regarding new developments in terms of priorities and issues. This agreement, which comes in a context where the Government of Benin has entrusted WFP with the implementation of the National Integrated School Feeding Programme (PNASI), will not only strengthen cooperation between the two parties but also renew the mutual trust. Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Aurélien Agbenonci and WFP Representative Guy Mesmin Oyila Adoua signed the WFP basic agreement in Benin on 28 May.

  • Following the different steps recorded through the process of the national survey on the Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA), the Government of Benin and WFP country office has organized the validation workshop of the final report. The mains results showed that food security has improved slightly since 2013, from 89 percent to 90.4 percent. However, 9.6 percent of the population is food insecure, 0.7 percent of whom are severely food insecure. This corresponds to 1.1 million food insecure people, including about 80,000 severely affected people.

  • For the 2017-2018 school year, school meals activities have started since 18 September 2017 both for the country office regular programme and the Government school meals programme. For the country office school meals programme, 101,297 schoolchildren were fed with WFP commodities, and 326,721 schoolchildren through the government programme since the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year up to now.

Operational Context

Benin population is predominantly rural; 51.2 percent are women and 17.4 percent are children aged 6-59 months. Over 36 percent of this population remains poor and life expectancy is 59.2 years. The population growth rate is 3.2 percent, among the highest in Africa.

Although agriculture is the economy's key sector, structural and natural disaster problems negatively affect food security, nutrition and the trade balance.

A Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA) conducted in 2013 estimated that 11 percent of the population is moderately and severely food insecure and 34 percent have limited or poor food consumption. According to the last Integrated Modular Survey on Household Living Conditions results (EMICoV, 2011), 32 percent of children aged 6-59 months suffer from chronic malnutrition. The HIV prevalence among adults is 1.2 percent according to UNAIDS (2013).

Although the 2015 national net enrolment rate is 98 percent (99.6 percent for boys and 96.3 percent for girls), Benin still has several rural districts with net enrolment rates below 50 percent, especially in the northern part of the country.

WFP has been present in Benin since 1964.