DAKAR – Germany has contributed €25.5 million (US$28.5 million) to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to assist more than 710,000 hungry people in the four-nation Lake Chad Basin region that is battling a Boko Haram insurgency.

The contribution supports WFP’s activities in Nigeria (€10.5 million), Cameroon (€5.6 million), Chad (€4.7 million) and Niger (€4.7 million). The funds are especially timely, as the imminent lean season – the period between harvests – is depleting people’s re-sources and intensifying hunger and malnutrition. 

More broadly, this support illustrates Germany’s generous and continuing response to the UN’s call for global, immediate action to address the Lake Chad Basin emergency, Africa’s largest humanitarian crisis. Northeast Nigeria, receiving the biggest share of as-sistance, risks tipping into famine.

“When I travelled to the Lake Chad Basin recently, I found a critical humanitarian situa-tion,” said Hinrich Thölken, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Federal Republic of Germany to the International Organizations in Rome. “A huge number of in-ternally displaced people are in urgent need of food assistance, and WFP is well-placed to deliver quick and effective relief. We are happy to give additional support so WFP can do so.”

The German contribution will support WFP’s food and cash-based assistance to more than 650,000 internally displaced people and refugees in the four countries. It will also benefit 17,000 young pupils in Niger and Cameroon who are enrolled in WFP’s emergen-cy school meals programme. In addition, it will allow 40,000 children under five to re-ceive special fortified foods that fight malnutrition.

Read more...