The style of this year’s World Food Day is ‘Innovate Today, Nourish Tomorrow’. Here, we report on the WFP-supported business owners who are developing services that link farmers to markets, enhance nutrition, reinforce food security and drive financial development.
Every harvest season, Cissy Apio Mario saw the very same thing take place.
She and numerous other South Sudanese farmers viewed the oilseed crops they strove to produce go unsold or to squander, even as the nation stayed greatly based on imported cooking oil.
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To her, the paradox made little sense. Why import an item that could be produced in your area?
That altered in 2024, when Mario’s women-led food-processing organization, Africa Cornerstone, started sourcing and processing oilseeds locally. What began as a little Juba-based operation now links 90 farmers to markets, showing a wider effort to enhance food security and construct more durable food systems in South Sudan.
“Lasting solutions to hunger begin with strong local food systems. By investing in local entrepreneurs, we are helping build a more resilient and self-reliant future.” – Mutinta Chimuka, WFP Country Director in South Sudan
For years, the nation’s story of appetite has actually mostly been informed through emergency situation help. Today, a World Food Programme (WFP) effort is seeing business owners smash that tradition, as they turn raw components like oilseeds, sorghum, millet and eggs into growing organizations that enhance nutritiondevelop tasks and reinforce regional food systems
“Lasting solutions to hunger begin with strong local food systems,” states Mutinta Chimuka, WFP Country Director in South Sudan “By investing in local entrepreneurs, we are helping build a more resilient and self-reliant future.”
Sparking food security options
Mario’s company counts amongst 11 chosen by WFP’s Nairobi-based IGNITE Innovation Hub, an East Africa-wide effort empowering regional business owners, start-ups, and small-and-medium business to deal with food insecurityreinforce South Sudan food systems and assistance food security in the nation and throughout East Africa.
Throughout the area, IGNITE obstacles have actually supported more than 100 business with over US$ 2 million in grants, catalysing more than US$ 20 million in effect financial investment. Together, they are turning concepts born in their neighborhoods into useful options to construct food security.
The effort surpasses funding, by likewise offering training, mentorship and market gain access to that assists appealing concepts end up being sustainable business. The 11 organizations chosen throughout 5 South Sudanese states got grants and service assistance in 2025 worth a combined US$ 544,000 – assisting to sustain a brand-new generation of food systems innovators.
“The innovations emerging from small and medium enterprises show how local solutions can address national challenges,” states Tito Awen Bol, Director for Food Security Analysis at South Sudan’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.
When Mario introduced Africa Cornerstone in South Sudan’s capital in 2024, her oil production was completely manual, restricted to 10 to 20 litres a week from crops sourced from simply 15 farmers. After effectively looking for an IGNITE grant a year back, she mechanized her processing, got company assistance and increased her production to as much as 120 litres weekly.
The business now deals with 90 oilseed farmers and strategies to broaden to 150. Training through IGNITE likewise enhanced her monetary management, marketing and digital abilities.
“Before, we didn’t even have a website,” she states. “Now we’re receiving enquiries outside Africa from people interested in visiting and learning about our work.”
Mario steps success not just in oil production, however in the lives she alters. “Some of the women I employed were struggling to survive,” she states. “Today, some have gone back to university and are paying their own tuition.”
Cooking up brand-new chances
The odor of newly baked bread wanders through the production space at popular Juba pastry shop Lulu Bakes
Employees prepare loaves made from in your area grown sorghum and millet – healthy grains that have actually long been staples for South Sudanese households however are hardly ever utilized in industrial food production. For creator Helen Foni, business started in 2023 with 2 issues: bad nutrition and joblessness.
“Diabetes is affecting many people,” she states. “That inspired me to produce healthier food” utilizing grains specialists state can assist handle the condition.
Like Mario, Foni wished to develop chances for ladies – especially single moms and ladies who had actually left of school. Her bakeshop likewise provided an essential link in the food systems chain, as a trustworthy purchaser for regional manufacturers.
Growing business, nevertheless, showed tough. Aging devices frequently broke down, interfering with production and typically needing service technicians from neighbouring Uganda to fix it.
A US$ 25,000 IGNITE grant permitted Lulu Bakes to acquire commercial baking and juice-processing equipment that substantially increased efficiency, assisting business fulfill growing need. Foni’s labor force has actually given that doubled from a preliminary 2 to 14 staff members, with females representing 80 percent of personnel.
She likewise sees how the pastry shop’s incomes can be empowering. “When women earn their own income, they can educate their children and support their families,” states Foni, who intends to develop an abilities training centre so other ladies can introduce organizations of their own. “That is the change I want to see.”
Splitting the protein space
Another Juba-based business owner, Alfred John Galeo, is enacting modification in a various method: through eggs.
Every day, the veterinary science trainee saw trucks of eggs getting here from Uganda. With the imports too costly for the poorest South Sudanese, lots of regional kids did not have access to this standard and abundant protein source.
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“If you walk through some communities, you can see the effects of malnutrition,” he states of a condition that impacts more than 2 million young South Sudanese kids. “Some of these cases can be prevented when families have access to affordable eggs.”
Identified to alter that truth, Galeo and his partners developed Dream Farm Agribusiness Cooperative in 2025. Beginning with around 500 birds and minimal facilities, business had a hard time to satisfy growing need. Water products were undependable, illness break outs positioned continuous dangers.
Later on last year, the partners protected a US$ 40,000 WFP IGNITE grant. They utilized the cash to broaden poultry real estate, develop vaccine storage centers, enhance defense versus illness break outs, set up a trustworthy water supply and purchase 1,500 extra chicks. For Galeo, nevertheless, IGNITE’s training used among the most important financial investments.
“Before this, we didn’t really understand poultry farming,” he states. “The training taught us about disease management, biosecurity and proper poultry practices.”
Today, Dream Farm products in between 600 to 720 eggs day-to-day to markets throughout Juba. The preliminary two-person operation now uses 6 personnel and, for a portion of the rate, supplies households with an in your area produced, budget friendly option to imported eggs.
“Food insecurity is not only a Juba problem,” Galeo states. “It is a national challenge. If we can expand, we can create jobs and help improve nutrition across the country.”
WFP’s IGNITE effort is moneyed by Denmark and Germany.
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