Togo | World Food Programme

Situated in the Gulf of Guinea, the Togolese Republic is home to 8.1 million people and plays a crucial role as a humanitarian aid corridor for landlocked countries in the Central Sahel region.

Togo’s economy heavily depends on commercial and subsistence agriculture, which employs 60 percent of the labour force. The nation, in its efforts to recover from the impact of COVID-19 and the Ukraine crisis, faces significant challenges exacerbated by socio-political and economic turmoil, recurrent flash floods, and spillover from the Sahel crisis. Forcibly displaced populations from the Sahel include both refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs).

Nearly 350,000 people are facing severe acute food insecurity, which could rise to over 423,000 if no assistance is provided.

WFP support includes food and/or cash to crisis-affected populations, the development of home-grown school feeding model and a focus on smallholder farmers. WFP provides technical assistance and on-demand services to government bodies and other partners, for the transport, storage and distribution of food and non-food products.

What the World Food Programme is doing in Togo

Emergency response: WFP in Togo provides life-saving food assistance to crisis-affected populations and strengthens national emergency preparedness and response systems. From 2021 to 2023, food assistance has been provided to over 600,000 vulnerable people through food and cash distributions. The support has continued in 2024, despite access constraints, with food distributions to around 63,500 vulnerable people including refugees, internally displaced people and host communities in the Savanes region.
Home-grown school feeding: Since the 2022-2023 school year, WFP has been implementing a pilot Home-Grown School Feeding programme in 50 public elementary schools in northern Togo. The programme includes the distribution of hot meals to more than 17,000 pupils, the establishment of school vegetable gardens and poultry-breeding units, the installation of grain and condiment mills, support to cooperatives of smallholder farmers, and capacity building for various groups on food hygiene and nutrition.
Resilience: WFP is supporting vulnerable, crisis-affected people by providing them with food for assets activities to build and improve community infrastructures. A total of 20,000 people are involved in building and restoring rural feeder roads and water reservoirs, as well as reforestation and water harvesting. These activities improve people’s access to productive assets, creating opportunities to enhance their livelihoods during and in the aftermath of crises.
Supply chain: The Port of Lomé is WFP’s main Global Commodity Management Facility Hub in West Africa, transporting food for operations in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. From 2021 to 2023, WFP Togo transported 255,000 metric tons of food. Since 2023, WFPl’s ogistics team broadened its scope to support the Ministry of Health and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), through the Saving Lives and Livelihoods initiative.