China donates emergency food aid worth $5m to Uganda

China’s President, Xi Jinping

China's President, Xi Jinping

Xi Jinping, China’s president

China on Friday donated emergency food aid worth 5 million dollars to Uganda to support World Food Programme (WFP) projects in the semi-arid northeastern region also known as Karamoja.

Handing over the food aid to Uganda at the WFP warehouse, Zheng Zhuqiang, Chinese Ambassador to Uganda said the money was got from the South-South Cooperation Fund and would benefit vulnerable women, children below the age of two years and school going children.

He said the emergency food aid project was also an important part of the implementation of the cooperation initiatives announced in the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit, held in 2015 in South Africa.

El Khidir Daloum, WFP Country Director, said the relief food which would last 10 months to enable more than 130,000 children have two meals a day at school instead of one.

The two meals per day will encourage the children to attend school regularly and concentrate better in their classes.

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Daloum said over 96,000 women and children would receive nutritional fortified food that would cure acute malnutrition or prevent stunting, a damaging condition that affects more than a third of young children in Karamoja.

“This contribution is very timely and critical for WFP ,as we were facing funding shortages for nutrition and school feeding activities in Karamoja.

In 2017, we had to reduce the number of school meals from two to one,” he said.

Musa Ecweru, Minister of State for Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, said that more than the last six decades, Karamoja which has faced long dry spells has depended on food aid.

He said government had been working with partners to ensure that the region is food secure.

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