Voices from the Field: United Nations World Food Program
The Challenge
Smallholder farmers play a critical role in food production around the world. Yet many of these individuals, especially women, confront pervasive challenges of food insecurity and poverty exacerbated by climate-related risks such as droughts, floods and storms that disproportionately impact their communities. Limited access to the tools and services that can provide protection from financial losses caused by these events, as well as gender disparities, further compound these systemic community challenges.
The Approach
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is strengthening the resilience and financial security of smallholder farmers in Zambia through the integration of two WFP initiatives: R4 Rural Resilience (R4) and SheCan. As part of the Global Innovation Challenge, the Citi Foundation is supporting both WFP programs through a grant to World Food Program USA. R4 Rural Resilience (R4) includes Maano – Virtual Farmers Market, a digital application providing financial literacy training and offering financial services such as digital savings, microloans and insurance to smallholder farmers. To support the success of these offerings, WFP is providing technical assistance and digital skills training to targeted new app users in 10 Zambian provinces. WFP is also providing capacity-building services to select Financial Service Providers (FSPs) to successfully onboard them to the app and reduce loan servicing costs – particularly for female farmers – in rural areas of Zambia.
Through the SheCan program, WFP is further increasing access to affordable capital for smallholder farmers in Zambia, focusing on women. Specifically, they are helping farmers connect to markets and access financial literacy training and tools such as micro-insurance, climate-risk mitigation tools, and technical training. This approach will improve the livelihoods and food security of an expected 100,000 farmers over two years.
"This program is a game-changer. We are thrilled to have the Citi Foundation’s support to facilitate services that promote climate risk insurance, helping farmers to enhance productivity by limiting the risk of crop loss and boosting access to credit. Through this program, we hope to empower farmers with the necessary tools and resources to overcome climate-related challenges and increase their income and food security."
“With the Citi Foundation’s inaugural Global Innovation Challenge, we aim to support innovative models that deepen community impact. I am particularly excited by the potential the United Nations World Food Programme has to scale its initiative over these two years to support shareholder farmers in Zambia.”
On February 22, 2024 the Citi Foundation came together with the United Nations World Food Programme team for a program launch event in Zambia.
World Food Program USA has a mission to inspire and mobilize people in the United States to support the United Nations World Food Programme’s mission to end global hunger. They are a Citi Foundation 2023 Global Innovation Challenge recipient. Learn more about the Citi Foundation’s Global Innovation Challenge model here.
