The Government of South Sudan and the World Food Programme (WFP) on Wednesday signed a three-year Letter of Understanding (LoU) worth USD 3.7 billion to improve food security in the country.
The WFP Country Strategic Plan (CSP) for 2023-2025 was signed by WFP Country Director Mary-Ellen McGroarty and Acting Foreign Minister Deng Dau Deng on Wednesday in Juba.
Speaking during the signing ceremony, McGroarty said the strategic plan will benefit over 4 million people with emergency needs.
“With this country plan, we hope to be helping over 4 million in emergencies and we also have plans to move to self-reliance and resilience,” she said.
According to the WFP boss, the strategic plan sets out a vision to address entrenched inequity by leveraging programs to build peaceful communities with the goal of leaving no one behind.
“This will be the first of three successive WFP strategic plans to be rolled out over the next 13 years,” McGroarty said. “As such, it should establish the foundations for a sequenced, layered, agile, and realistic longer-term approach where WFP’s role as a food assistance provider evolves as government institutions and systems take increasing ownership and respond to the needs of vulnerable people.”
She revealed that WFP’s long-term program includes reducing the need for emergency humanitarian assistance while building the capacity of the population to become self-reliant and resilient.
For his part, Acting Foreign Minister Dau said the agreement will enable WFP to support the development projects of line ministries.
“This USD 3 billion will be for a range of activities and they have what they call outcome 1 and outcome 2 and they have objectives that have been set,” he said. “We want to encourage our government to coordinate with the UN and for them to be able to benefit from the activity that we are launching today.”
He reiterated the government’s commitment to cooperate with WFP to ensure the smooth implementation of the strategic plan.
On 24 December 2022, South Sudan’s cabinet approved the World Food Program’s (WFP) Country Strategic Plan 2023-2025 w to improve food security over the next three years.