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The Malawi country context between 2000 and 2008 can be divided into two periods: a period of crisis and instability followed by recovery. WFP was responding to rapid changes during the emergency period, then to supporting the transition to recovery, while addressing structural risk and reinforcing positive trends. In this respect, the current paper evaluates WFP activities in the mentioned period, and presents some recommendations.

The document indicates that WFP made a significant contribution to food security during the initial period (2000-2005), strengthening the government response through delivering high quality programmes in the areas of emergency assistance. However, WFP’s contribution after 2005 has been affected by difficulties in moving towards a recovery and social protection orientation. Indeed, evolution of the programme was affected by the contradictory positions of its counterparts; a gap between government requests, government’s political sensitivities over food aid and what international donors were willing to fund. These contradictions contributed to resource mobilisation problems and were reflected in the consequence of WFP’s internal difficulties in defining and communicating its role.

The author recommends the following measures to be put in place: 

• the next country strategic plan should specifically address the WFP’s role in Malawi’s recovery process
• the plan should place particular emphasis on integrating a capacity development strategy into the WFP’s Malawi programme
• WFP should provide more comprehensive training for staff and counterparts than is currently available
• WFP’s approach to nutrition should be moved from curative to preventative
• future school feeding programmes (SFP) should consider the impact of expanding demand for education services on the quality of education; appropriate measures should be taken to coordinate demand and supply-side expansions
• WFP should integrate the SFP fully into the Ministry of Education structures and its frameworks.
  

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