Amidst extreme poverty, WFP cash cushions DRC refugees in Uganda
Without WFP, 80 percent of them would be living in extreme poverty
Two weeks ago, 24-year-old Solange Mahingwe came back home with a healthy new baby named Shakira. Yet as the Congolese refugee paces around her home in Rwamwanja refugee settlement in west Uganda, she hardly celebrates. Her two older children have nothing to eat for supper because she is broke. Dry maize stalks stand all around her house, its cobs long harvested. Her eldest child is Kadija, aged 5 and her second born is Mohammed, aged 3.
“I will find a way,” Solange says, as her children play on a patch of grass in her compound. “I will go borrow more money from the village women’s savings group. I will borrow until I receive cash from WFP tomorrow.
“My priority is to feed my children,” she adds. “When I get the WFP money, I stock up on food.”
The stocking up became a problem though the day before she went to give birth. She realised she had so much food but no money at all. She was forced to sell off a little bit of it to buy clothes for the new baby.
Solange was in better shape a few years ago. She worked with her partner on a rented farm where they grew maize and earned some money. But the farm is no more. The Government allocated the land to another family of refugees, she says.
The partner is himself no more. He has not come home for six months now. Someone told Solange he went back to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with a woman he was with before they met.
“We met at Nyakabande transit centre when I arrived in Uganda in 2012. He told me he was not seeing anyone, so we started to rebuild our lives together.”
When her husband’s other woman re-surfaced, Solange made a plan to move out of the make-shift shack she shared with him. With money earned from the farm, she acquired a two-room house and the surrounding farming area at the equivalent of US$79. She was already expecting Shakira.
The family sleeps in the bigger of the two rooms, which is closed off with a tattered cloth curtain. Solange’s beddings were stolen at the health centre where she gave birth. She had carried a mattress, a blanket and bedsheets.
Solange says she will resume working soon — on farms of mostly Ugandan nationals who grow lots of maize in the valleys. This money will help her to earn the minimum of the equivalent of less than US$1 that she is required to pay weekly to the women’s group.
It is important for her to be part of the group, she says, because she can access money in emergencies. The group has 25 women household representatives, all of whom are refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Francoise Nyirantaba is another member of the group. Like Solange, she arrived in Uganda fleeing armed violence in the DRC. The 37-year-old was shot in the armpit during a battle that lasted 12 hrs in Kiwanja village in North Kivu province. It was a Tuesday, Francoise recalls.
As she lay on the ground bleeding, she saw armoured vehicles of the M23 rebel group, as well as civilian cars that the rebels brought in to carry away wounded soldiers. When she came out of hospital, it was obvious she had to leave her country. Their house had been burnt in the fighting; it was now a hollow frame.
Francoise, too, says feeding her children is her priority.
“When they eat what they like, then a major problem is sorted. They like rice and a particular brand of maize flour, and that is what I buy, if I can afford it.”
Francoise’s husband died recently just a week after complaining of stomach problems. Determined to give her children a decent life on her own, and to rebuild the house the family lost in a storm recently, she borrowed start-up capital from the savings group. She now sells silver fish and maize flour and runs a bar.
Francoise has no immediate plans of going back to the DRC. “I have nothing there,” she laughs. “Where would I take six young children?”
A vulnerability study conducted by Development Pathways in 2018 found that 69 percent of refugees in Uganda live in extreme poverty. The study found that in the absence of WFP’s assistance, extreme poverty levels would be at 80 percent.
As funding becomes available, WFP provides refugees with monthly rations in the form of in-kind food or cash to meet their basic food needs. Using biometric identity verification since 2018, WFP also provides additional rations for pregnant and nursing women to prevent or treat malnutrition.
WFP’s assistance complements the work of the Government, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and NGOs in assisting the refugees to restart their lives in Uganda.
WFP is grateful to the following donors, who enabled a smooth food/cash pipeline for refugees since 2017: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, European Commission Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO), Germany, Iceland, Japan, Luxembourg, multi-lateral donors, Norway, Republic of Korea, Russia, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States of America. WFP also received funding from the United Nations Central Emergency Fund (CERF) and other UN Funds.
