The Chief’s Diary: On Food Security, WFP Reports That Together #WeAreDelivering
By Mahmud Tim Kargbo
For much of the past decade, Sierra Leone’s food security story has been told through the language of crisis. There were years when inflation eroded household incomes faster than wages could keep pace. Years when climate shocks disrupted agricultural production. Years when rising global commodity prices and supply chain disruptions pushed food beyond the reach of many families. Successive assessments painted a troubling picture of growing vulnerability, forcing policymakers and development partners into a near constant cycle of response and recovery.
Yet, a closer reading of the World Food Programme’s Sierra Leone Annual Country Report 2025 suggests that something important may be changing. Not because the country’s food security challenges have disappeared. Not because poverty has been defeated. But because the evidence increasingly points to a transition from crisis management towards food systems transformation. Indeed, the World Food Programme itself describes 2025 as a year in which Sierra Leone recorded “tangible progress in stabilising food insecurity and advancing nationally led food systems reforms”, creating space for a strategic shift “from crisis containment towards consolidation of food systems gains” (https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000172896/download/).
That distinction deserves attention.
Humanitarian agencies are typically associated with emergency interventions. Their reports often catalogue needs, vulnerabilities and shortages. What makes the 2025 assessment noteworthy is that it is not primarily a document about emergency relief. It is increasingly a document about systems, institutions and long-term resilience. At the centre of that story lies a remarkable statistic. According to the World Food Programme, the proportion of Sierra Leoneans facing acute food insecurity declined from 28 per cent in 2024 to 13 per cent in 2025 (https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000172896/download/).
In development terms, that is a significant shift.
Behind the percentages are real people. Families with greater access to food. Households under less pressure from soaring prices. Communities experiencing greater stability than they did only a year earlier. The immediate explanation lies in the economy. The report notes that inflation eased considerably during 2025, reducing pressure on household purchasing power and improving affordability, particularly for rice, the country’s most important staple food. Price stability during the lean season also helped prevent the sharp deterioration in food consumption that frequently affects vulnerable households.
Economic recovery undoubtedly played a role. But economics alone cannot explain the broader transformation described in the report. The more revealing story lies in how government policy, agricultural production, social protection and nutrition interventions increasingly converged around a common objective: strengthening Sierra Leone’s food system from within. Perhaps the most significant finding in the report is not a statistic at all. It is the World Food Programme’s repeated emphasis on nationally led reforms. Throughout the document, the organisation describes itself as supporting government priorities rather than substituting for them. It highlights government aligned interventions, national ownership and efforts to translate policy reforms into measurable food security outcomes.
This may appear to be a subtle distinction. It is not. For decades, development success across Africa has often been framed around the scale of donor interventions. The 2025 report suggests a different model. One in which development partners support nationally defined priorities while domestic institutions increasingly drive implementation. In Sierra Leone’s case, agriculture sits at the centre of that strategy. That reality becomes evident when examining one of the report’s most important programmes: Home-Grown School Feeding.
According to the World Food Programme, support for the Government’s Human Capital Development agenda enabled the expansion of Home-Grown School Feeding coverage to 384 schools across 16 districts, providing regular nutritious meals to more than 81,000 pre-primary and primary school children. Overall, school feeding programmes reached more than 250,000 children nationwide during 2025 (https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000172896/download/).
At first glance, school feeding appears to be a social protection intervention. In practice, it has become much more than that.
Modern school feeding programmes increasingly serve as economic development instruments. Every meal consumed in a classroom generates demand throughout the agricultural economy. Farmers produce the food. Traders transport it. Processors prepare it. Rural communities benefit from the resulting economic activity. The World Food Programme explicitly acknowledges this evolution, describing the programme’s transition from a traditional feeding intervention into a broader nutrition and food systems platform.
That transformation is critical, because it reflects a wider shift in development thinking. The objective is no longer simply to distribute food. The objective is to strengthen the systems that produce it. Nowhere is that clearer than in the report’s emphasis on local procurement. According to the World Food Programme, more than 1,900 metric tonnes of locally produced rice and over 50 metric tonnes of pulses were purchased during 2025. Those purchases injected approximately USD 2 million directly into rural economies while creating reliable markets for domestic producers (https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000172896/download/).
This detail may be one of the most consequential findings in the entire report.
Historically, food assistance programmes around the world have often relied heavily on imported commodities. While such approaches can address immediate needs, they do little to strengthen domestic agricultural production. The model emerging in Sierra Leone points in another direction. By purchasing food from local farmers, food security interventions simultaneously stimulate production, expand market opportunities and strengthen rural livelihoods. The report notes that participating farmers benefited from improved market access, reduced post-harvest losses and increased confidence to invest in production.
In other words, food security policy and agricultural policy are increasingly reinforcing one another. That matters, because no country has ever achieved lasting food security without strengthening its agricultural base. The significance of this relationship becomes even clearer when viewed through the lens of rice. Rice occupies a unique place in Sierra Leone’s political economy. It is the country’s staple food, a major import commodity and a recurring source of economic vulnerability. Successive governments have sought to reduce dependence on imported rice while expanding domestic production and processing capacity.
The World Food Programme’s report suggests that progress is being made on that front. During 2025, the organisation supported the installation of ten modern rice milling machines across eight districts. According to the report, the investment increased the country’s ability to process locally produced paddy into higher quality market-ready rice, while simultaneously reducing post-harvest losses and improving efficiency across the rice value chain (https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000172896/download/).
This is not merely an agricultural story. It is a competitiveness story.
One of the longstanding challenges facing domestic rice production has been the gap between what farmers grow and what markets demand. Poor processing infrastructure can undermine quality, reduce profitability and increase dependence on imports. By strengthening rice processing capacity, Sierra Leone is addressing one of the structural bottlenecks that has historically constrained the sector. The implications extend beyond individual farmers. Stronger processing capacity contributes to stronger domestic value chains. Stronger value chains improve food availability, increase resilience and reduce vulnerability to external shocks. In practical terms, they also advance a longstanding national objective: reducing reliance on imported food. Nutrition represents another pillar of the transformation.
The World Food Programme reports that it supported the production and distribution of fortified supplementary foods while expanding nutrition interventions targeted at young children and caregivers. Social and behaviour change programmes provided guidance on infant feeding practices, dietary diversity and food preparation, recognising that food security is ultimately about nutritional outcomes as much as food availability (https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000172896/download/).
This distinction is important. A household can consume sufficient calories and still experience poor nutrition. Sustainable development therefore requires not only more food, but better food and greater knowledge about how it is used.
Importantly, the report notes that multi-year funding secured during the year has positioned these programmes for future expansion and deeper integration within health and food systems. Taken together, these developments help explain why the World Food Programme concluded that 2025 marked a year of meaningful progress. They also provide an interesting lens through which to view the Ministry of Agriculture’s reported achievement of attaining 100 per cent of its annual targets. Government performance claims should always be approached with scrutiny. Targets can be achieved on paper without necessarily producing meaningful outcomes.
Yet the significance of the World Food Programme’s findings lies precisely in their independence. The report documents measurable improvements in food security. It documents expanded agricultural procurement. It documents investments in rice processing infrastructure. It documents stronger market access for farmers. It documents growing integration between school feeding, agriculture and nutrition. Taken collectively, these indicators suggest that at least some of the reforms pursued within the agricultural sector are producing tangible results.
That does not mean Sierra Leone has won the battle against food insecurity. Far from it. The World Food Programme warns that a substantial proportion of households remain classified under IPC Phase 3, or Crisis conditions. Many families continue to experience food consumption gaps or rely on unsustainable coping mechanisms to meet basic needs (https://www.ipcinfo.org/).
The warning is a necessary reminder that progress remains fragile. Climate shocks have not disappeared. Global food markets remain volatile. Economic gains can be reversed. Agricultural transformation is a long-term process rather than a single-year achievement.
Yet, neither should the country’s progress be dismissed. Too often, development discourse oscillates between unwarranted celebration and excessive pessimism. Reality usually lies somewhere in between. The significance of Sierra Leone’s progress in 2025 is not that food insecurity has disappeared. It has not. Nor is it that every challenge confronting agriculture, nutrition and rural livelihoods has been resolved. They have not. The significance lies elsewhere. For perhaps the first time in several years, one of the world’s leading humanitarian agencies is documenting evidence that policy, production, nutrition, markets and local institutions are beginning to move in the same direction.
That is what makes this report noteworthy. The task now is ensuring that this moment becomes a trend rather than an exception. Because food security is not ultimately measured by reports, targets or donor assessments. It is measured by whether ordinary families can depend on tomorrow. Increasingly, the evidence suggests that more Sierra Leoneans can.