Kenya

WFP works with the Kenyan government to strengthen its ability to provide its own food security and nutrition assistance programmes, such as activities supporting poor smallholder farmers. As part of this work, WFP supports institutions such as the National Drought Management Authority, working on hazard analysis and early warning to help improve the country’s preparedness and response to emergencies.

WFP supports communities in building or repairing assets such as small dams, terraces, water pans, irrigation systems, fodder fields and tree farms. This promotes longer-term resilience by increasing agricultural productivity and allowing communities to grow more food, diversify incomes, keep livestock healthy and protect the environment. WFP’s asset creation activities are a key element of support for the Government’s Ending Drought Emergency Plan.

WFP has run a school meals programme since 1980, working with Kenya’s Ministry of Education. This provides nutritious meals to 1.5 million children in the most food-insecure districts. Since 2009, the government-led home grown school meals programme has bought food from local farmers, helping support educational achievement at the same time as stimulating the local economy.

Kenya hosts over 400,000 refugees, the majority living in camps in remote, food-insecure counties where they are unable to work. This makes them highly dependent on international assistance. WFP provides them with food rations, along with electronic cash transfers that enable them to purchase their own choice of food from local markets, boosting the local economy. Young children and pregnant or nursing women also receive specially fortified food.

Using a specialized blend of fortified food infused with micronutrients, WFP treats acute malnutrition among children under 5 and pregnant and nursing women. WFP also runs programmes to prevent malnutrition, providing extra nutrients to young babies and their mothers. In some counties, primary school children receive micronutrient powders, and in one county WFP distributes fresh fruit and vegetables.

WFP supports Kenya’s smallholder farmers by helping them acquire the skills and tools they need to grow better-quality produce and more of it, enabling them to compete in formal agricultural markets and make use of group storage facilities. With 75 percent of Kenya’s population cultivating small plots of land, the training WFP provides means farmers are better equipped to expand their production and increase their incomes.