WFP spends more than US$745 million annually in East Africa. This spending is vital to the humanitarian operations, and also affects local economies, potentially creating large income and production impacts.

The World Food Programme (WFP) spends more than US$745 million annually in Regional Bureau of Nairobi (RBN) countries. In 2019, the RBN region moved 1.1 million MT of food throughout East Africa. It disbursed US$270 million in cash to 5.4 million beneficiaries in the countries covered by RBN. It procured and supplied more than 500,000 MT of food from local, regional, and global sources. This spending is vital to the humanitarian operations of the WFP. It also affects RBN economies, potentially creating large income and production impacts in the region.

This project uses state-of-the-art economic modelling tools to estimate the broader economic impacts of WFP’s expenditures in RBN countries and in the East Africa region as a whole. To achieve its food security and nutrition objectives, WFP operations spend large sums of money on food, logistics and other non-food goods and services in East Africa countries. This can stimulate production and incomes in the directly affected countries and activities. As the impacts of WFP operations work their way through the economy, they spread across households, businesses, and localities within countries as well as to other countries in the region, through trade. Because of this, the amount WFP spends represents only part of the impact of WFP spending in the region; there are also income, production, and trade spillovers, or secondary impacts.

Source: World Food Programme