Delivering dividends in CAR
While parts of the Central African Republic have been buffeted by a new wave of violence, a tenuous calm reigns elsewhere. In the northwestern Paoua area, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is helping farmers to capitalize on the region’s rich agricultural potential, a key driver of the country’s development.
Caroline Wanwan slashes through the scraps of weeds and dead wood, her scythe glistening in the late morning sun. She has been working since dawn, but even now in the sultry heat, she shows no signs of slowing.
A pair of oxen once did this back-breaking work. But they are gone, along with most of her family’s meagre possessions — stolen by one of the tangle of militia groups that have wreaked mayhem across this central African nation in recent years.
“The men arrived to the market firing their guns, and all the women fled,” Wanwan, 40, recalled of the incident last year. “They seized our livestock and took all of our newly harvested peanuts.”
Paoua once counted among the country’s hotspots. But today, United Nations peacekeepers and local forces have secured the immediate area around the northwestern town, allowing displaced and traumatized families like Wanwan’s to return home.
Improved security also means that longer-term development initiatives can begin taking root. Here in Paoua, interlinked WFP programmes, supporting schools and farmers, are helping communities to get back on their feet.
“I have a lot of hope for this area,” says Mahoua Coulibaly, head of WFP’s Paoua office. “When I arrived here in April 2014 and I see Paoua today, I see things have changed. Maybe it’s not obvious to everyone. But those of us who have been here for some time see things are moving forward.”
Yet there are sizeable challenges ahead, including fears the violence may return. And today, life for families like Wanwan’s remains extremely difficult.
“Before we had oxen and grew enough to eat and a little bit to sell,” says the mother of eight. “Now, we have to rent animals to do some of the work. But at least I’m back in the field.”
Wanwan is treasurer of a women’s farming group that sells its surplus to a Paoua agricultural cooperative. Through WFP’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative, we work with the cooperative’s farmers to improve their production and links to markets.
WFP also buys a share of their surplus harvests. This year, we plan to double our purchases of crops like white beans and sorghum.
These investments are benefitting the broader community. For example, some of the WFP-purchased crops are used in our ‘Home Grown School Meals’ programme, targeting 44,000 primary school children in the Paoua area.
“In the past, we had problems transporting our surplus to sell in (the capital) Bangui and other places,” says the cooperative’s president, Sylvanus Teon, describing the challenges of relying on the country’s network of poorly maintained and dangerous roads. “With our contracts with WFP, we can now sell our food locally — and our children eat it at school.”
At a nearby primary school, young men lug big vats of steaming rice and beans into classrooms. A group of mothers cooks up the hearty lunches. Other parents are banding together to grow vegetables in the school’s garden.
The school was temporarily shuttered in 2016, due to unrest. Only last September, did classes resume.
“At the beginning, it wasn’t easy,” Principal Charles Lebrun Bapou Yabanga says. “Kids were scared and some parents categorically refused to send their children to school.
“Now we feel secure, even if there are still problems outside of town,” he adds. “More children are now attending. The WFP food is sometimes their only meal of the day.”
In the fields, farmers like Wanwan are hoping the calm will prevail and the rains will deliver a good harvest. Her women’s farming group is now pooling money to replace their stolen livestock.
“They took everything,” she says of the militia groups. “But we can’t look back. We have to look ahead.”
