U.S Donates $20 Million Towards Food Assistance

Food Assistance- credit FFN

The United States of America has donated $20 million (MK14 billion) in food assistance to support vulnerable food insecure communities in the country.

USA' Second Lady, Dr Jill Biden made the announcement on Tuesday in Blantyre when she visited the Ubale Food for Peace project in the area of T/A Machinjiri bringing the US's total contribution to the humanitarian response to $74.7 million (MK52 billion) since October, 2015.

"The United States remains committed to supporting the region including Malawi during difficult months ahead and I am pleased to announce today $20 million in assistance to Malawi through the United Nation World Food Programme.

"The announcement today, brings the total United States assistance to $74.7 million since the start of the food crisis in October," said Biden.

US Ambassador, Virginia Palmer said they are working very closely with the Malawi government and other development partners to ensure hunger does not roll back the important development gains made in Malawi particularly for women and girls.

President Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika declared the country a State of Disaster on 12 April, 2016.

Currently, over 6.5 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance according to the 2016 Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC) report, an increase from 2.8 million people during last year's agricultural season.

After Machinjiri, the Second Lady also visited Nsamba Primary School in Zomba where she attended a standard two class lesson in which the teacher used explicit strategies to improve student's advanced reading skills as guided by USAID's ASPIRE project currently running at the school.

Biden expressed satisfaction with how the teachers and students are faring in the project in advancing reading among pupils.

The ASPIRE project aims at improving reading skills for girls in upper primary school while the Ubale project aims at reducing food insecurity and building resilience among vulnerable populations in three of the most food insecure, chronically malnourished and disaster prone districts of the southern Malawi namely Nsanje, Chikwawa and Blantyre.

Both Ubale, a $63 million and ASPIRE, $10.4 million projects are being supported by USAID and run for five and four years respectively.