Against hunger

Thanks to your support, we improved the lives of over 360’000 people around the world in 2022. Of these, more than 110’000 people received life-saving emergency aid.

In Niger, for example, heavy rains destroyed the homes and crops of thousands of people in autumn 2021, leaving them without a livelihood. Shortly afterwards, the country experienced an extreme drought that destroyed the rest of the harvest. SWISSAID, as one of the few organisations on the ground, helped quickly and effectively.

• 69’000 people immediately received food parcels
• 3’000 families left homeless by the floods have been relocated
• 110’000 farming families received seeds and support to grow vegetables.

Thanks to the switch to resilient, traditional seeds, the people of Niger are now better equipped to cope with climate change.

We are committed to ending hunger, achieving food security and strengthening sustainable agriculture. We have therefore set ourselves an ambitious goal. For 20% of the people in our project regions, hunger should no longer be an issue by 2024. To achieve this goal, SWISSAID is relying on:

• The empowerment of women: We promote women’s rights and strengthen the position of women, especially women farmers. The whole region benefits from this development in the long term.
• Agroecology: We support people in dealing with the changing climate conditions and at the same time produce more climate-friendly and sustainable themselves.

Women play a crucial role in food security. Their discrimination affects the development of a society. By strengthening their rights, their self-confidence, their position in the community and their access to markets, our projects simultaneously improve the food security of farming families.

The following video impressively shows how the whole society benefits from the empowerment of women (in French).

Agroecology is a sustainable form of agriculture that combines social, ecological, economic and cultural aspects. By providing agroecological training and supporting farming families who want to switch to agroecology, SWISSAID promotes the shift to environmentally friendly and sustainable food systems. This makes families more resilient to climate change, which significantly reduces the risk of malnutrition and hunger.

In 2022, the Sufosec Alliance, of which SWISSAID is a member, published its first food report. It highlights the dramatic increase in hunger in the world with figures and testimonies from those affected in the South. However, it also shows that agroecology is the right approach to ensuring healthy, sustainable and sufficient food – and protecting the planet at the same time.