Adam Ahmed Abdelrhman¹, Ali Abdel Aziz Salih², Elwasila Mukhtar Mohamed^3,

This paper aimed to assess effectiveness of food assistance provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) in improving livelihoods of the internally displaced peoples in South Darfur State, Sudan during 2015-2020. The study's analysis used both secondary and primary data. Given the homogeneity of the population in the study, 300 households were interviewed. The study used SPSS V.21 software to analyze the data. The results showed that around 61% of IDPs received food, 26% received cash, and 13% received both food and cash. Food assistance enabled 85% of IDPs to recover their lost assets, raise their income, save money, and produce a variety of nutritious food. The correlation analysis results indicated the existence of positive and significant relationships between support of food and other several variables. The positive correlations with access to land was higher than average, about 65% with P≥0.05 significance level, while those with saving money and access to market were below average, about 43% and 28% respectively, with significance level of P≥0.001 each. The study concluded that in the two camps, women were more reliant on food assistance than men, they received nutritive foods and supplements in form of food, cash and both food voucher and cash. Though the IDPs favored a combination of food and cash vouchers, they confront difficulties in moving cash money to such remote areas. Providing food assistance and training enabled IDPs to work, rebuild their assets, save money, and contribute to increased food production for family consumption and market sales. The outcome of this study suggested donors and their partners to continue to provide food assistance to vulnerable households and increase their access to improved seeds to boost crop production and resilience capacity, increase the number of contracted female retailers, and facilitate the easy transfer of cash assistance to recipients.

South Darfur State, food assistance, livelihoods, internally displaced people, World Food Programme, effectiveness, Sudan