WFP’s Food Procurement and Linking Farmers to Markets: An Experience in Balancing Objectives

This seminar will examine the challenges and benefits that the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has seen in purchasing the majority of the food it provides as humanitarian assistance on local and regional markets in developing countries. It will further explore how WFP met the request from many of its donor governments for the organization to review its approach to this procurement in order to achieve a greater developmental impact, particularly by purchasing from smaller-scale farmers and nascent businesses.  How to procure in the most cost-efficient manner and yet contribute in a more meaningful way to the economies of the developing countries tapped is being increasingly studied in the business world as well as the humanitarian realm and a topic that is now of great concern to many.

Guest Speaker:

Nicole Menage
Formerly of the United Nations World Food Programme

Speaker Bio:

Nicole Menage worked for the United Nations for almost 34 years, of which close to 32 were with the World Food Programme (WFP).  She was Country Director and Representative in Nepal until the end of last year. Before that, she was Chief of the Food Procurement Service, then Director of the Procurement Division, based in WFP’s headquarters in Rome. Her previous positions also include Country Director and Representative in Tanzania; Chief of the Great Lakes, Ethiopia and Djibouti Section of the Africa Bureau, based in Rome; and Country Director and Regional Procurement Coordinator for Southern Africa, based in Zimbabwe.  She also served in Togo, Malawi and Burundi.