Iraq News Now

What is FFA?

The most food-insecure people often live in fragile and degraded landscapes and areas prone to recurrent natural shocks and other risks. Food Assistance for Assets (FFA) is one of WFP’s initiatives aimed at addressing the most food-insecure people’s immediate food needs with cash, voucher or food transfers while helping improve their long-term food security and resilience.

The concept is simple: people receive cash or food-based transfers to address their immediate food needs while they build or boost assets, such as constructing a road or rehabilitating degraded land, that will improve their livelihoods by creating healthier natural environments, reducing risks and impact of shocks, increasing food productivity, and strengthening resilience to natural disasters.

The integration of FFA into wider Productive Safety Net approaches – as in the Republic of Kyrgyztan or Sudan – supports productive asset creation for food-insecure communities during the lean season, and has the potential to play a key role in longer-term social protection strategies in countries affected by chronic food insecurity and protracted crisis.

FFA Types of Activities

• Household-level assets, such as fuel-efficient stoves;

• Natural resources development and management, including dams and com-munity forests;

• Restoring agricultural, pastoral, and fisheries potential through terraces, irrigation canals, etc.;

• Community access to markets, social services and infrastructure, such as granaries;

• Skills development trainings related to asset creation, management, and maintenance.

In each community, WFP aims to integrate multiple types of FFA activities with local government development plans and other WFP and partner interventions (including UN partners such as FAO and IFAD) to re-inforce each other’s impact.

2018 achievements in the region

In 2018, more than 850,000 people directly benefited from FFA programmes in 8 countries. Key achievements include

• 26,000 hectares of land rehabilitated

• 34 water ponds, shallow wells and fish ponds built

• 1,000 kilometres of feeder roads constructed

• 1,600 hectares of forest planted/rehabilitated

• 681 social or community infrastructure assets constructed or rebuilt.