Ethiopia, WFP discuss effective humanitarian aid delivery, building resilience

Addis Ababa, January 26, 2024 (FBC) – A consultative meeting has been conducted between Ms. Semereta Sewasew, State Minister of Finance and Ms. Valerie Guarnieri, Assistance Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP) on January 26, 2026, in the Ministry of Finance of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.

The meeting was also attended by Mr Chris Nikoi, Acting Representative and Country Director of WFP-Ethiopia.

During the meeting, the State Minister of Finance raised that Ethiopia is facing multiple challenges as is true for many countries around the world. The various manmade and natural disasters have been putting the lives of people at exceeding risk, especially in the most vulnerable places. As a result of these factors, she said the need for humanitarian assistance has been increased, obviously disproportionately to the capacity to respond to all the needs.

Being cognizant of the humanitarian crisis, the government of Ethiopia has been exerting its maximum efforts within its limited capacity and resources to reach the most susceptible people in need in coordination with various partners, among which includes WFP. The World Food Programme, the largest humanitarian organization in the world, is playing critical roles in life-saving food assistance and unconditional cash transfers to millions of the most vulnerable people in Ethiopia including in Afar, Amhara, Tigray and Somali regions. The government-led Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is also covering a significant portion of people in need though the support is unparalleled with the mounting needs.

As raised during the meeting, apart from the emergency responses, the government of Ethiopia has also been focusing on resilience-building interventions to protect the livelihoods of vulnerable people through various income diversification and generation efforts as a sustainable way of creating self-reliant people.

Ms Guarnier, during the meeting, emphasized the need for improved considerations between the Ethiopian government and all humanitarian actors. She said the importance of strong alignment and coordination with the government and other similar endeavours is critical to prioritize teaching the neediest people. In this regard, enhancing the practice of availing and sharing updated data to create synergy among government-led partner-supported interventions has been raised as a critical point. During the discussion, the importance of creating a unified national system to register data to identify beneficiaries and manage prioritization would increase the effectiveness of all kinds of humanitarian support rectifying the overlapping assistance. It was agreed the national ID programme in this aspect will play a paramount role in building a credible social registry system for the effective management of humanitarian assistance and beyond, as communicated by the Ministry of Finance on its social media page.