WFP food trucks cross the Adre border crossing, from Chad to Sudan, en-route to Zamzam camp in North Darfur. Picture: WFP/Sylvain Barral
More than 700 trucks are on the road in Sudan amid a surge in UN World Food Program (WFP) efforts to reach millions of people in the African country’s most isolated war zones.
The WFP says the food convoys are heading to 14 hotspots due to the severe food and famine risk in those areas.
The trucks are carrying about 17,500 tons of food supplies, enough to feed 1.5 million people for one month.
“WFP has been pushing to reach all isolated conflict zones across Sudan,” says Laurent Bukera, the WFP regional director for Eastern Africa.
“The team in Sudan is working around the clock to make sure families receive the food necessary to survive. We desperately need this to be successful if we are to turn the tide of famine in one of the world’s worst hunger crises.”
Bukera says safe passage had to be guaranteed for the truck convoys to reach every family at risk.
Since September, WFP has fed an average of two million people each month across Sudan.
The first food aid convoy arrived in North Darfur’s Zamzam camp, where famine was confirmed in August.
A combination of fighting around North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher, and impassable roads brought on by the rainy season from June to September stopped incoming food shipments, the UN organisation says.
“In the interim, WFP drew on locally sourced food commodities to feed 100,000 people in the camp during September and October,” it says.
Sudan is now home to half of the world’s population who are facing catastrophic hunger; an estimated 4.7 million children under the age of five, and pregnant and/or breastfeeding women, are suffering from acute malnutrition.
The WFP also welcomed a recent decision by Sudanese authorities to extend, by three months, the opening of the Adre crossing between Chad and Sudan.
WFP executive director Cindy McCain recently visited Port Sudan and emphasised the need for constant and secure access to the people to prevent what may become one of the worst hunger crises in recent history.
The African nation plunged into civil war in mid-April 2023 when fighting broke out between its military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Force in the capital of Khartoum then spread to other regions, including western Darfur.
Efforts to broker a cease-fire have failed. More than 20,000 people were killed, according to the UN, with some 14 million people (30 per cent of the population) forcibly displaced.
