Cameroon: IDPs invest WFP food cash assistance in small businesses to secure their families’ future
WFP supports the recovery efforts of families such as Joyce’s and Manfred’s from the armed conflict that started in 2016.
By Landrine Ngwa
Joyce Mankuhu is serving ekwang (a dish originally from Cameroon and Nigeria made from grated cocoyams wrapped in leaves, smoked fish, and palm oil) to around twenty customers. This is the main menu at her makeshift restaurant in Bamenda, in north-west Cameroon.
In her 40s, Joyce is one of thousands of people who have had to flee armed violence in the wake of the conflict in the anglophone regions of Cameroon. Leaving behind their homes and all their means of subsistence: farming and petty trading. ‘All I could think about was getting my family out of harm’s way,’ recalls this single mother, who has 11 family members to look after, including her only child, two grandchildren, her sisters, and their children, and her visually impaired brother.
Since 2016, there has been a conflict between the government and separatist groups in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions (North-West and South-West). Causing the displacement of over 583,000 people.
When the fighting spread to the Bafut village, Joyce had to flee with her family to find refuge in an unfinished building in the locality, in the Mezam Division of the North-West region of Cameroon. The family had to beg regularly from neighbours and well-wishers to get one meal a day. ‘I would have to make sure that everyone had something to nibble on,’ Joyce recounts with a tear in her eye. ‘I used to go to bed at night wondering what we were going to eat the next day.
Hosted for a few months by a generous family, Joyce and her family had to continue their move because the host family was unable to provide them with food and shelter following the death of the head of the family. She and her family then had to seek refuge elsewhere in the locality surviving on the little she could get here and there.
It is in this community that Joyce was identified by the World Food Programme (WFP) as a beneficiary of the emergency cash assistance that the organization is implementing through its Rapid Cash Assistance programme. In December 2024, Joyce received 19,000 CFA francs (around US$30), enough to enable her to support her family by developing an income-generating activity.
“This assistance has given me more than money; it has given me hope,” Joyce says, a smile finally returning to her face. “It’s a chance to rebuild, piece by piece.”
The Hope Farm
Manfred Saahkem was also forced to flee his home following armed violence. A retired civil servant, this father of seven was forced to leave his village of Bamumbu, in south-west Cameroon, in 2019, to take refuge in Mendankwe, in Bamenda.
With his modest savings, he was able to buy a plot of land and started farming to provide for his family. But with food prices rising in Cameroon, and the conflict resulting in ‘Ghost town’ days imposed by armed groups in Bamenda, Manfred is finding it difficult to provide for his family.
But with his family identified as one of the households to benefit from WFP cash assistance, the future looks much brighter for Manfred and his family. ‘This farm is the only thing that allows us to live while waiting for my pension to be paid’, confides the sixty-year-old, whose ambition since then has been to expand his poultry and pig farm.
WFP’s Rapid Cash Response programme has provided emergency food assistance to more than 2,000 people affected by the security crisis in the Northwest region. It is funded by the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations.