Chad country strategic plan (2024–2028)

CSP approved at EB February 2024

Chad is home to 17.4 million people, 2.1 million of whom are heavily affected by food insecurity according to the latest Cadre Harmonisé data, and at least one in three Chadian children is malnourished. Nutritious food is affordable for less than half of the population, and although they are among the most climate vulnerable and food-insecure people in the world, most Chadians do not have access to social safety nets.

Displacement, difficult socioeconomic conditions and poor social protection provision are the three main drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition. Figures from mid-2023 indicate that Chad is host to more than 972,000 refugees from neighbouring Central African Republic, Cameroon, Nigeria and the Sudan, with over 382,000 people arriving from the Sudan between the outbreak of conflict in that country in April 2023 and mid-September 2023. Meanwhile, more than 250,000 Chadians are internally displaced, many of them unable meet their food needs independently. The country’s socioeconomic challenges result in deep poverty and high unemployment combined with rising food prices, and access to even the most basic level of social protection is extremely low.

Despite this fragility, there are many opportunities to support Chad in sustaining the positive environment for refugee protection that has been created in the country and contribute to inclusive, sustainable and peaceful development and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. There is also scope for WFP to further operationalize the humanitarian–development–peace nexus approach in Chad. Under this country strategic plan for 2024–2028, WFP will continue to directly address the needs of the most vulnerable and crisis-affected households and communities through targeted, unconditional emergency assistance. WFP will remain responsive to needs arising from continuing displacement and influxes of refugees into Chad.

During the implementation of the plan, WFP will increasingly position resilience programmes, anticipatory action and shock-responsive social protection, especially school feeding, as more sustainable responses to recurrent, chronic and persistent food insecurity, including during the lean season.

WFP will increasingly focus on stimulating local production and the consumption of nutritious foods, particularly through support for women and smallholder farmers, in order to scale up community-based approaches to malnutrition prevention.

In parallel with the Government of Chad and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, WFP will aim to introduce durable food security solutions for the longest standing displaced populations and host communities. WFP will also invest in country capacity strengthening activities and policy development in relation to disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness and response, adaptive social protection and nutrition management, harnessing innovation.

This country strategic plan is the result of a consultative process involving WFP beneficiaries, the Government, communities and other WFP stakeholders in Chad. It has been informed by an evaluation of the country strategic plan for 2019–2023 and is aligned with all five WFP strategic outcomes and the United Nations sustainable development cooperation framework for Chad, which operationalizes Chad’s national development plan and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

It will contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals 2, 4, 5 and 17 through the following country strategic plan outcomes:

➢ Outcome 1 will enhance crisis response in order to address growing displacement crises and increased demand for food security and nutrition assistance.

➢ Outcome 2 provides a strategy for expanding the school feeding programme and improving community-based malnutrition prevention.

➢ Outcome 3 will reinforce livelihoods support, with a focus on durable solutions and ensuring adaptiveness and resilience to climate-related shocks.

➢ Outcome 4 is dedicated to capacity strengthening and shock-responsive social protection.

➢ Outcome 5 will ensure continued provision of logistics and procurement services and humanitarian flights in support of crisis response.

To achieve these goals while meeting its commitments to people-centred approaches and humanitarian principles, WFP will expand its financial and operational partnerships and seek policy synergies with international financial institutions, academic institutions, civil society, non-governmental organizations, the other Rome-based agencies and other United Nations and national entities. WFP will also strengthen evidence generation, invest further in community feedback mechanisms, re-emphasize protection and conflict sensitivity, and rigorously apply risk management approaches.