Lesotho
- 57%
- of people live below poverty line
- 508,125
- people are food insecure
- 2.2 million
- population
Lesotho is experiencing a major food security crisis as a result of the El-Niño induced drought. The situation has been made worse by successive years of crop failures, low incomes and high food prices that mean that 41 percent of rural families are spending over half their income on food.
Over 30% of the Lesotho population across all 10 districts will face high levels of acute food insecurity until March 2020. More than 70 percent of the population in rural Lesotho is engaged in subsistence farming. Productivity has been deteriorating since the early 1990s because of unpredictable weather conditions, including inconsistent rains and persistent and recurring droughts.
What the World Food Programme is doing in Lesotho
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Crisis response
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WFP targets women, men, girls and boys affected by shocks to reduce the impact of shocks and save lives by protecting livelihoods. This is achieved through the delivery of food and cash assistance.
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Social protection
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WFP supports the government of Lesotho in evidence-based planning, design, management and implementation of gender-responsive social protection programmes – including handing over the home-grown school feeding programme – and strengthens technical capacity of the Government in early warning, food and nutrition security monitoring, and vulnerability assessment and analysis through forecast-based financing approaches.
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Nutrition
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WFP provides capacity strengthening to the Government of Lesotho and other actors regarding multi-sectoral coordination, planning, evidence building and implementation of equitable nutrition policies and programmes.
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Resilience and smallholder farmers
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WFP supports the design and implementation of assets that are nutrition-sensitive and that improve and diversify the livelihoods of vulnerable communities and households affected by climate change and land degradation, and provides technical support to smallholder farmers and other value chain actors, particularly women, in climate-smart agriculture, food safety and quality, marketing of nutritious foods and financial services.
Lesotho news releases
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Achieving Zero Hunger is the work of many. Our work in Lesotho is made possible by the support and collaboration of our partners and donors, including:
Find out more about the state of food security in Lesotho
Visit the food security analysis pageContacts
Office
WFP House,11 United Nations Road, Opposite Maseru Club, P.O. Box 301, Maseru, Lesotho
Maseru
Lesotho
Phone
+266 22 323 989
Fax
+ 266 22 310 239