The Integrated Package in Action

Greening the Sahel:
Resilience through Asset Building

Through Food Assistance For Assets (FFA) activities WFP supports communities in bringing their landscapes back to life, enhancing their natural resource base and developing community infrastructure. Through accompanying cash, voucher or food transfers they are able to address their immediate food needs. At the same time, the assets built will improve food security, livelihoods and resilience to natural disasters of communities in the long-term.

Greening the Sahel:
Resilience through Asset Building

  • Across the Sahel, through FFA activities communities are empowered to:

    • restore degraded landscapes and restore agricultural, pastoral and fisheries potential (e.g. half-moons, zai pits, soil and stone-faced bunds, sand dunes fixation, forestry and agroforestry, etc.)
    • improve water harvesting for multiple uses (e.g. water ponds, well, boreholes, trenches, underground storage, etc.)
    • reverse negative environmental trends to reduce risk of environmental disasters (e.g. flood protection, natural resources regeneration, stabilisation, etc.)
    • develop community infrastructure (community access roads, grain stores, etc.)


    In areas that are highly degraded, this requires a major overhaul of ecosystems.

  • Since the beginning of the scale up:

    85,000 ha of degraded land rehabilitated or treated

    some 1,700 ha of garden created to produce fresh vegetables and fruits

    more than 40,000 mt of compost produced

    Testimonies from the field:

    article Half-moons greening the Sahel
    play_circle_filled Land Rehabilitation: the example of Bourgherba (Mauritania)

  • Half-moons greening the Sahel

    Through a combination of dike, soil bunds and half-moon techniques, the community of Bougherba (Mauritania) recuperated 51 ha of land. The impressive changes have created new hope in the village: “We want to do better and bigger next year. We will produce more millet, sell our harvest on the market and create a long-term business”, notes the president of the village committee, Zein Ould Moahmed Ahmoud.
    Half-moons are traditional techniques used to restore degraded lands by increasing water infiltration and improve food and fodder production.

    The cash distributed at the end of the work enables the beneficiaries to acquire sufficient quality inputs such as improved seeds and fertilizers.

School Feeding:
Empowering Children and Communities

  • Nutritious school meals improve the children’s overall health and nutrition and allow them to learn and perform better at school. School feeding empowers girls by dissuading parents from marrying them off early and they act as an incentive for families to enrol and keep their children in school.

    School feeding can be linked to complementary activities, such as building school gardens, installing grain mills or women’s groups managing herds. All together, this contributes to the production and consumption of more diversified food. At the same time school feeding activities present an entry point to sensitize about gardening, nutrition and the environment. By linking school meals with farmers, local food value chains can be strengthened, and livelihoods increased.

  • Over the past year,

    380,000 children received nutritious school meals

    1,500 schools supported under the school meals programme

    Testimonies from the field:

    article Home-grown schoolfeeding: the example of Bandaro, Chad
    play_circle_filled Nafissa's Story: How School Feeding is Making a Difference in Chad

  • Home-grown school feeding: the example of Bandaro, Chad

    By linking school feeding programmes with local smallholder farmers, children receive food that is safe, diverse, nutritious, and above all local. The benefits of this are evident and manifold. The schools provide local farmers with a predictable outlet for their products, leading to a stable income, more investments and higher productivity.

    The community garden in Bandaro in the Chadian region of Guera links local food production to school meals and nutrition. From the production in the 2 ha-community garden and field, the community contributes fresh vegetables, cereals and pulses. The garden is set to yield some 20 tons of vegetables this year, enabled by three shallow wells, and boosted by part of the 350 m3 of compost prepared. Women working in the community garden also participate in the preparation of school meals and produce fresh pasta.

Strengthening Rural Livelihoods and Income

  • WFP supports smallholders to increase their incomes and livelihoods by developing value chains and access to markets. With assistance from WFP and partners, smallholders optimize the use of assets and produce generated from gardens and rehabilitated sites, focusing on the creation of (agri-)businesses and linking farmers with markets. Encouraged to form associations, they are able to negotiate better, sell more, lower their transaction costs and extend their customer base.

  • Over the past year,

    140 smallholder farmer organizations assisted to reduce post-harvest losses, improve food quality, further value chain development, and strengthen marketing capacities

    Testimonies from the field:

    article Dairy processing in Sio, Mali
    article Supporting income generation through compost production

  • Dairy processing in Sio, Mali

    As part of the development of nutrition-sensitive value chains, a milk processing unit in Sio, Mopti region (Mali) was built. “It’s very interesting to master the whole process of dairy transformation”. Fanta Kamian works at the dairy processing unit in Soufouroulaye, where the community is able to produce 1,000 liters per day thanks to improved transformation capacities supported by WFP. In total, 9 cooperatives, comprising 128 households, benefit from this transformation unit supported by WFP.

  • Supporting income generation through compost production

    In Burkina Faso, WFP developed and set up three innovative business-oriented compost production units. The use of semi-automatic shredders along with enhanced compost activators allows to significantly reduce the time and labour needed for preparation of the biomass and accelerates the transformation process from 6 to 2 months. This way, the quantities produced are sufficient to allow for a marketable surplus – with the envisaged production amounting to 150 mt per production unit and year –, thus covering the needs not only of participating beneficiaries, but also the broader community. 75 people were already trained, with significant participation of youth and women.

  • This sub-activity ensures the continued supply of quality organic manure for agricultural production on reclaimed or protected land and contributes to sustainable soil fertilisation, significant reduction of hardship, job creation for young people, and diversification of economic activities especially for youth and women.

    “Compost production was a very tedious work for women. We went very far carrying the biomass on our heads and looking for water with our kitchen items. Production was very low and the process took too much of our time. But thanks to WFP’s support, we could benefit from work material: a cart that eases the transport of biomass and water, and mills. Our work is now less tedious. Also, this technology that we are benefitting from, allows us to intensify compost production to fertilize our fields and to increase our revenues.”
    Sore Balkissa

Providing Healthy and Nutritious Food to Women and Children

  • To change lives, food is not enough - the right nutrition at the right time can also help break the cycle of poverty and enables resilience from within. In the Sahel, WFP works to treat and prevent the direct causes of malnutrition, while simultaneously addressing the underlying factors, such as poor knowledge of feeding practices or limited access to basic social services. Nutrition-sensitiveness as objective is also cross-cutting in all WFP activities. For example, in agricultural and gardening activities, where nutritive plants and seeds are prioritized.

    One way to sensitize and inform about healthy nutrition practices is through community nutrition learning and exchange groups. In these groups women and children gather with trained educators from the community and learn about nutrition, health, child and maternal feeding practices and the preparation of healthy foods based on local products.

  • Efforts are concentrated on the most vulnerable, targeting young children, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and people in adverse health conditions.

    Over the past months,

    550,000 children and women received malnutrition treatment/prevention support

    Testimonies from the field:

    article Women cooperatives in Ergui produce more and more diverse food
    play_circle_filled NOURISHED - super foods in the sahel

  • Women cooperatives in Ergui produce more and more diverse food

    In community nutrition centres in Mauritania, pregnant women and mothers gather in community awareness and learning groups, called GASPA. In monthly sessions, they learn about good feeding practices, hygiene, health and nutrition. These nutrition-specific interventions often go hand in hand with FFA and other activities.

    One example of how soil rehabilitation, nutrition, health and livelihood outcomes are directly linked are women cooperatives, like in Ergui in Guidimmakha region in Mauritania, that aim to empower women, so that they can have vegetables for their own consumption and also a part for sale, allowing them to have a small income.

  • The 75 women are organised in several groups growing vegetables, including aubergine, cabbage, onions, carrot, okra and groundnuts. Each group takes care of the vegetable garden in order to maintain it, water it, sow it and harvest it.

    Aicha Mint Muraba is 63 years old and has 18 children. She is the president of the women cooperative. She explains: “Our soils have become very fertile and our children are increasingly healthy thanks to the basic products and the vegetable. This year we remarked a decrease in illness. Before we mainly consumed beans and few aliments (…) but now this has changed. (…) We have developed, and we are not hungry anymore. We eat a lot of food that we haven’t consumed before. We earn money and with that money, we buy meat (…), our crops are really profitable with their diversity of vegetables.”

Supporting People through Times of Hardship

  • The period between two harvests, when food stocks are depleted (June to September), often causes vulnerable communities to resort to negative coping mechanisms such as selling productive assets, reducing the number of meals or accumulating debt, undermining their resilience in the long-term. Lean season assistance during this time includes the provision of food, cash or vouchers to overcome seasonal constraints and protect resilience gains for the most vulnerable people in targeted communities.

    WFP’s cash and food assistance in hardship situations is part of a wider engagement of different partners (like World Bank and UNICEF) to strengthen national adaptive social protection (ASP) systems in the Sahel. Resilience and social protection approaches are highly interlinked. Together, multi-year integrated resilience activities and agile safety-net schemes, that provide punctual protective assistance in times of shocks, contribute to resilient development and decreased needs over time.

  • Since May 2020, WFP and partners have scaled up their support to ASP to address the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 as part of the national response to the pandemic.

    Last year,

    470,000 people assisted during lean season with cash transfers, vouchers or food

    Testimonies from the field:

    article Cash assistance during dry season in Maradi
    play_circle_filled Empowering women through resilience activities in Niger

  • Cash assistance during dry season in Maradi

    Poor rains have affected crops and reduced fodder and water for livestock, making life more difficult for some people in recent years. On average, annual cereal production in Niger is only sufficient to meet seven months of food needs. The lean season, which runs from at least June to September, therefore regularly results in a structural food crisis. Additionally, Niger has to face several security challenges. As a result, many localities in Niger have been cut off from their tradition means of traditional subsistence. Faced with these challenges, WFP has provided food and nutritional assistance to the village of Hardo Hirro in the Maradi region, as it has to all the localities in Niger.

Delivering in Times of Covid-19:
Protecting People and Safeguarding Resilience

  • With the spread of the Covid-19 virus, communities in the Sahel have encountered severe challenges in accessing food, basic social services and in maintaining their livelihoods and incomes. To protect communities and safeguard resilience gains at this critical time, WFP has adapted and reinforced interventions, including through reinforcing WASH and integrating health and hygiene measures, providing awareness-raising sessions, refocusing activities from the community to individual and household level, combining food distributions, and providing alternative forms of support for schoolchildren where possible.

  • Since the beginning of the pandemic:

    dispatch of some 350,000 hygiene kits

    Installation of more than 10,000 hand washing facilities

    Testimonies from the field:

    article Investing in homesteads for resilient households
    play_circle_filled Mauritania: School meals for every student

  • Investing in homesteads for resilient households

    Many of the assets created through FFA are designed to strengthen resilience at community and landscape level. Homestead activities aim to bring that change by asset creation also to the household level. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, homestead activities proved to be a particularly valuable component of the integrated package: As they do not require large community gatherings, homestead activities could be easily adapted to the new operating environment and scaled up in a number of countries.

    In the village of Tabo, in Chad’s Guera region, homestead activities are implemented since July 2019. Following the onset of the pandemic, health and hygiene measures like handwashing facilities and family-based or remote sensitization sessions on COVID-19 were put in place to continue implementation while keeping beneficiaries and staff safe. Households were incentivized to add assets to their homesteads, such as improved stoves, latrines, vegetable gardens and composting pits, as well as fruit or forest tree plantation in and around their homesteads.

Coalition Building for Resilience

  • WFP is not working alone. Covering the various dimensions of resilience and reaching scale goes beyond the capacity of a single intervention or organization. That is why coalition building is a key element of the programme, i.e. leveraging linkages and complementarities with partners based on operational footprint, expertise and capacities to assist the same targeted communities.

    Governments are in the driver’s seat to own and lead the WFP integrated resilience programme. Hence, the resilience approach engages government ministries and technical units at all levels in planning, implementation, and monitoring. At a regional level, WFP actively engages with regional institutions (e.g. G5 Sahel Executive Secretary and the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel CILSS) to improve food and nutrition security analysis and to support coalitions building to operationalize resilience at scale.

    Seeking operational complementarities and leveraging synergies, the programme is working in partnership with UN agencies, NGOs, technical and financial partners. Particularly noteworthy is the partnership between WFP, FAO and IFAD who joined forces to support the G5 Sahel Investment Plan’s Resilience pillar under the coordination of the Executive Secretariat. Further, feeding into the WFP-UNICEF Enhanced Partnership, both organizations have kickstarted complementary programming for resilience building in Mali, Mauritania and Niger. While WFP is collaborating with GIZ across the region, particularly noteworthy are the latest developments in Niger where GIZ and WFP will target the same communities with complementary resilience activities in the areas of social cohesion, income generation, and disaster risk management.

  • Since 2017, WFP has been actively promoting its partnership with local Universities in the Sahel and the integrated resilience programme has been instrumental in formally setting up the Sahel University Network for Resilience (REUNIR). This partnership provides a unique opportunity for research and knowledge-sharing on resilience building across the region, advance the institutionalization of resilience tools, and help build the future generation of resilience experts.

    WFP is working with 90 implementing/cooperating partners

    Agreements with 10 universities to strengthen technical capacities

    Research for 145 master theses conducted on WFP resilience sites

    WFP and UNICEF together target 3.5 million vulnerable people

    Testimonies from the field:

    article Rakiatou Issoufou Adamou

  • Rakiatou Issoufou Adamou

    Issoufou Adamou Rakiatou, Master student of the University of Niamey (Niger) conducted her research internship in Sahiya (Tahoua region) from July to October 2017."My work involved evaluating the level of engagement of all actors involved in the Community-based Participatory Planning (CBPP). This internship allowed me to see the reality on the ground because we spent months on the site together with the communities. In addition, it allowed me to see what we learned throughout the course and experiment it in the field. I have learned a lot from the local population who master many techniques that we were not aware of before. The community has definitely trained us."

Communities at the Centre of Planning and Implementation

  • Above all, the programme works with the communities, who take ownership of their own transformative journey. This is why the WFP’s approach is grounded in the principle of inclusive community ownership and leadership – at all stages: in design, planning and implementation; in tracking progress and changes against their community plans; and in strengthening communities’ self-help capacities as well as community-based organisations.

    By means of community-based participatory planning (CBPP), WFP, partners and government aim to create a platform for inclusive community engagement, where the most vulnerable, marginalized, and disempowered have a voice in community discussions on needs and solutions

    Building resilience and strengthening social cohesion in fragile and conflict-prone settings
    Disrupting livelihoods and markets as well as heightening the pressure on ecosystems and natural resources, conflict and displacement often has a dire impact on food security. In fragile areas, resilience-building activities can contribute to addressing the root causes of hunger, inequality and conflict, serving as a buffer to instability and restoring hope.
    Participatory planning processes are at the centre of this effort, fostering dialogue and trust within communities as well as ensuring that the most vulnerable and marginalized have a voice in discussions affecting their lives.

  • Moreover, the activities of WFP’s integrated resilience package speak to both tackling vulnerabilities of affected populations as well as contribute reducing some of the root causes of social tensions and conflict. For instance, asset creation activities help to enhance the availability and productivity of land and water resources as well as promote equitable use of such resources, which can be a source of tension and conflict in the Sahel.
    When parched landscapes are worked to yield grass or crops, children are at school, youth find jobs without embarking on unsafe migration, women are able to easily access water to grow nutritious foods, and whole communities come together, resilience building can truly change lives and pave the way for self-reliant, resilient, and peaceful societies.

    355 community-based participatory planning (CBPP) exercises completed

    Testimonies from the field:

    article Mauritanian women telling their stories in pictures
    play_circle_filled Little Gardens of Hope Sprouting in Burkina Faso

  • Mauritanian women telling their stories in pictures

    In Assaba region, Mauritania, 20 women from the communities of the resilience project were trained to tell their stories through photography. The women took pictures around the topics of nutrition, school canteen and FFA. For all participants it was the first time they had held a camera.

  • After a graduation ceremony the best photos will become part of an exhibition and some trainees will continue their engagement as storytellers of the resilience project. Quote: « I really liked the course, we learned a lot, and it was the first time I used a camera. Now, thanks to photography, you can keep all your history.” Hawa, student.
    Follow the link to know more: How we are changing our lives

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