A regional Food Security Advocacy Mission to Liberia paid a brief visit to the National Food Assistance Agency (NFAA) at its Fiamah office on May 28, 2025 to get the agency actively involved in mobilizing and coordinating sustainable food security programs in the country.
Accompanied by a staff from the Food Security Division at the Ministry of Agriculture and some technicians from the World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Liberia, the Mission held some inception conversation with the Senior Management Team (SMT) of NFAA.
Key amongst points deliberated at the round-table were renewing efforts to create sustainable food security information systems, unifying institutional efforts to ensure accurate provision of food security data across the country, and designating NFAA as the main institution of government to use such data and coordinate all food assistance responses.
The head of the Mission and Deputy Executive Secretary of Permanent Inter-States for Drought Control in the Sahel, Mr. Sylvain Nafiba OUEDRAOGO disclosed that the Mission is part of ECOWAS mandate to help countries of the region set up a sustainable food security system driven by a unifying tool that helps to produce relevant, consensual, rigorous, and transparent analyses of current and projected food and nutrition situation in the country. Such tool, according to Mr. OUEDRAOGO, would be meaningful to response-planning to food and nutrition crises as part of the intervention Analysis, Planning, Implementation, and Monitoring/Evaluation continuum.
In separate remarks, the leadership of NFAA thanked the Mission for recognizing the efforts of the agency in the food assistance sector of the country. The Director General of the agency, Hon. Borkai A.M. Sirleaf recounted the many challenges the agency faced in getting off the ground to emerge as a fully-fledged autonomous institution of the state. “NFAA’s establishment dates as far back as the 1970s, retaining its legal status all those years through Executive Orders (Eos), DG asserted.
Much to the admiration of the Mission, however, DG disclosed that with the people-centered leadership approach of the Boakai-Koung led administration of national government, the act to grant NFAA legal permanent status had been passed by both Houses of the National Legislature.
Hon. Sirleaf therefore urged the Mission to help build the capacity of NFAA staff to effectively support the food security information system for its sustainability in Liberia.
