Food as a tool bringing South Sudan back to life
How a road built with the help of WFP connects a community to a new world of opportunities
As you enter Terbai village in South Sudan cattle kraals and grass thatched huts are a common sight. Big trees shedding leaves and cattle in search of pasture give it a rural feel until you reach a new 3.5 km gravel road to the world.
Built by hand and with no graders and earthmovers, the road is an example of what happens when a village puts its heads and hands together. The farmers’ group that built it is “Madbai,” which in the local dialect means a community coming together.
“We can now call an ambulance and it comes right up to our doorstep.”
Terbai has borne the brunt of South Sudan’s conflict and suffered from years of isolation. Cut off from social services and markets, like much of the rest of the young country, the new road is bringing opportunities and joy villagers.
WFP encourages and helps communities across South Sudan to develop their own infrastructure through what is known as Food Assistance for Assets (FFA).
How it works
WFP provides farmers’ groups with short term food assistance to help cover immediate food needs, as they build assets to strengthen communities’ resilience. The assets play key role by preventing hunger and rebuilding people’s lives and livelihoods.
The initiative helps communities shift from relying on humanitarian aid to producing their own food and it also stimulates other economic activities.
For Madbai, the road has far reaching benefits. After the 3.5 km road, the farmers constructed a 1.5 km road connecting Tebai to another village.
Local solutions
Road travel in South Sudan can be a nightmare with 60 percent of the country inaccessible by road, especially during the six-month annual rainy season.
The 3.5 km stretch of the feeder road is part of the group’s efforts to enhance access to the village not only to social services such as health and education, but also for vehicles so people can easily reach their fields and ferry their produce to the markets — a much needed service in rural communities.
“Before the construction of this road we used to suffer a lot, going to the hospital was the biggest problem,” says Mary Akuei, who is expecting her fourth child. “Now we can call ambulance and it comes up to our doorstep.”
The farmers’ group is 230 strong — most of them women. It is seen as a driving force for development in the community. Vehicles now easily reach all corners of the village instead of parking outside when the going got just too rough.
“Before constructing this road, trucks would stop in Yirol town but now they come up to our village,” says Paul Majok Nhial, a member of Madbai. “Even traders who didn’t want to buy from us, they now come for our produce.”
Starvation begins where the road ends
“Starvation begins where the road ends in South Sudan,” says Matthew Hollingworth, WFP Country Director. “In areas where we have either rehabilitated or constructed roads, such as Yambio and Maban, we have seen improvements in the food security situation. With sufficient resources and peace, we hope to do even more to ensure a country free from hunger.”
Bumper harvest
Madbai has also taken up the fight against hunger in their community, which was in a hunger hotspot.
Hunger is now a thing of the past for Terbai. The farmers’ group is growing sorghum, beans, ground nuts and cowpeas and harvested close to 1,000 bags of groundnuts and 700 bags of sorghum while neighbouring villages suffered.
“In the dry season like this we would deplete our food and then start selling our goats,” says Daniel Mayor, a Madbai member. “With food in stock, life is different now.”
The farmers’ group shows that moving from crisis responses to early recovery not only ensures quick access to food, but also rebuilds lives and gives ordinary people a means to make a living and support themselves rather than relying on others.
Big plans
The group now plans to increase their harvest in the next season and sell more. But with this ambitious plan for mass production requires storage.
The group has made bricks and hopes to construct a storage facility before the next planting season. “We have over 5,000 bricks already in place,” says Majok, adding that they however still lacks cement, nails and iron sheets.
Madbai plans to grow into a cooperative society and engage in-full scale commercial agriculture.“Hunger is no longer our problem,” adds Majok. “We want to grow bigger and sell to more agencies and government.”
With support from the African Development Bank (AfDB), Canada, China, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the German Development Bank (KfW), Japan, United Kingdom and the United States of America, over 600,000 people benefit directly from WFP’s initiative, which has been running for three years.
As a result, a total of 40,000 hectares of crops and vegetable gardens were planted across the country in 2019. Close to 500-km of community access roads were constructed and over 60 multi-purpose water ponds were created.
