Somalia country strategic plan (2022–2025)

CSP approved at EB 2 2021 session

Revision 01 approved by the ED-DGFAO in December 2022

Revision 02 approved by the CD in June 2023

Revision 03 approved by the ED in July 2024

Despite measurable progress, Somalia continues to grapple with successive shocks, concurrent crises and multiple development challenges, both natural and human-made, that constrain its capacity to achieve sustainable food and nutrition security.

After two decades of protracted conflict, Somalis adopted a provisional constitution in 2012, establishing a parliament and a federal political system. The country’s ninth national development plan, for the period 2020–2024, aligns and mainstreams the Sustainable Development Goals across the Government’s agenda and reflects the principles of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

To support the Government’s ambition, the United Nations has matched the four strategic pillars of the national development plan against the four strategic priorities of the Somalia United Nations sustainable development cooperation framework for 2021‒2025: inclusive politics and reconciliation (strategic priority 1); security and rule of law (strategic priority 2); economic development (strategic priority 3); and social development (strategic priority 4). WFP was a key contributor in developing the evidence base for the Somalia United Nations sustainable development cooperation framework (through the United Nations common country analysis process) and participated in defining its theory of change for developing pathways to peace and sustainable, inclusive development.

These instruments complement the strategic objectives of the 2021 humanitarian response plan: reduce loss of life, sustain lives and uphold commitments to protection. These concerns are fully reflected in this country strategic plan, which integrates WFP’s responses to jointly support the Government’s goals.

The common country analysis reflects the recognition that eradicating poverty and reaching zero hunger “will take the best of the upcoming decade in the most positive scenario”. With the outlook aggravated by the “triple shock” of 2020 ‒ the coronavirus disease pandemic, a desert locust infestation and devastating floods ‒ the consensus among all stakeholders is to intensify a “triple nexus” approach: responding to urgent humanitarian needs while scaling up safety nets to provide broad coverage and contributing wherever possible to stabilization and peacebuilding efforts. For WFP, this includes recognizing the harmful links between human conflict and hunger and reaching those furthest behind ‒ who in Somalia now number in the millions across displaced and nondisplaced communities in both rural and urban settings.

Based on evidence, experience and lessons learned, harnessing its comparative advantage with the Government and partners across the triple nexus, WFP proposes a strategy that will fulfil its humanitarian mandate and sustainably move affected populations onto a resilience path through five fully integrated and interrelated strategic outcomes:

➢ For strategic outcome 1, focusing on crisis response, WFP will provide life-saving, hunger-reducing support, including the treatment and prevention of malnutrition, for those most at risk during and in the aftermath of shocks, including returnees, refugees and internally displaced persons.

➢ For strategic outcome 2, focusing on resilience building, WFP will protect and develop human capital in rural and urban settings through nutrition-sensitive, shockresponsive safety nets, cash-based home-grown school feeding and gender responsive, nutrition-sensitive social and behaviour change communications.

➢ For strategic outcome 3, WFP will build the resilience of communities and households to shocks and open pathways to self-reliance through solutions that make food systems more productive, inclusive, equitable, environmentally sustainable and capable of delivering healthy and nutritious diets to all.

➢ For strategic outcome 4, WFP will provide capacity strengthening and technical assistance to government entities responsible for national gender- and shockresponsive safety net programmes; disaster risk reduction and mitigation that empowers anticipatory action; school feeding; and food security needs assessment and response.

➢ For strategic outcome 5, WFP will provide mandated and on-demand services to the humanitarian community through the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service, the WFP-led logistics cluster and WFP’s bilateral service provision, so that the humanitarian community in Somalia is better able to reach people at risk and respond to needs and emergencies.