Cameroon Country Strategic Plan (2022–2026)

CSP approved at the EB February 2022 session.

Revision 01 approved by the CD in September 2022.

Despite some economic progress as a lower-middle-income country, Cameroon enters the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals enduring recurrent climatic shocks, unrelenting civil conflict and persistent challenges from acute and chronic food and nutrition insecurity.

The severity of the humanitarian needs in Cameroon is increasing as climatic shocks and stressors (floods and drought), prolonged regionalized conflicts, insecurity and related population displacements and the negative health and socioeconomic impacts of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic further erode the weakened resilience of households, bringing food and nutrition insecurity to areas not previously affected.

WFP therefore proposes a five-year country strategic plan that is aligned with national and United Nations priorities and is designed to assist the country in arresting and reversing the deterioration in its food security and nutrition situation in recent years, recalibrating collective efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 and positioning WFP and its partners to effect tangible progress towards zero hunger over the course of the subsequent strategic plan period, through to the milestone year 2030.

Building on a national consensus about applying resilience approaches appropriately across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, this country strategic plan embodies the agenda both to save lives and change lives and WFP, accordingly, will continue to meet critical needs while working with partners to progressively tailor resilience-building activities; leveraging joint opportunities to support national systems; and advocating targeted, equitable and shock-responsive safety nets and social protection programmes. With a focus on 2030, WFP will prioritize approaches that are sustainable, scalable and replicable.

Leveraging its comparative advantages in Cameroon, WFP will deliver as follows on five strategic outcomes: 

➢ For strategic outcome 1, to ensure that people are better able to meet their food and essential needs, WFP will support crisis-affected populations – including refugees, internally displaced persons, returnees and host populations – seeking safe access to adequate and nutritious food during and after crises.

➢ For strategic outcome 2, to ensure that people have better nutrition and health outcomes, WFP will support children 6–23 months of age, adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and other nutritionally vulnerable groups in prioritized regions seeking to improve their nutrition-status and increase their resilience through safe year-round access to adequate and nutritious food.

➢ For strategic outcome 3, to ensure that people have improved livelihoods and increased resilience to shocks and stressors, WFP will assist food-insecure and climate-affected populations and smallholder farmers seeking enhanced self-reliance, productivity, and resilience to shocks.

➢ For strategic outcome 4, to strengthen national programmes and systems, WFP will work with national institutions and partners to enable them to better manage food and nutrition programmes and social protection systems.

➢ For strategic outcome 5, to ensure that humanitarian and development actors are more efficient and effective WFP will assist the humanitarian community in Cameroon in its efforts to respond to emergencies and reach vulnerable populations throughout the year.

To implement the country strategic plan the WFP country office in Cameroon will embrace humanitarian principles and ensure that cross-cutting concerns on gender, disability, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, protection and accountability to affected populations are integrated into its programmatic approaches. Embracing conflict sensitivity across its portfolio of activities, WFP will ensure that its interventions contribute to peace and stability, when possible and appropriate, addressing emergency needs through hunger-reducing activities. The country office will be guided by WFP‘s updated corporate approach to access.

The country strategic plan is strategically aligned with the Government’s national development strategy for 2020–2030, the 2021 humanitarian response plan, the United Nations sustainable development cooperation framework for 2022–2026 and WFP’s strategic plan for 2022–2025. It is informed by experience and evidence, especially that revealed by the 2016 national zero hunger strategic review and the 2020 United Nations common country assessment.

WFP’s plans in Cameroon seek to address both immediate and medium-to-long-term programmatic needs. Across the period covered by this country strategic plan and the next, the country office will look to broaden its role from that of an operational partner implementing food and nutrition assistance programmes to that of a provider of focused and systems-based technical support and institutional capacity strengthening to support food security and social protection.