Food Resilience Program for Famished Yemenis

Zakat Foundation Provides Power for Yemen Sesame Processors

On Famine’s Doorstep

Two-thirds of Yemen’s underfed, war-ravaged people now teeter on the edge of starvation. So Zakat Foundation of America has stepped up its food resilience program among sesame growers, using your gifts to buy stand-alone power sources for 65 Yemeni-owned oil-processing facilities.

“Prevent starvation. That’s our donors’ top priority in Yemen,” said Halil Demir, Zakat Foundation Executive Director, “with a long-term goal of increasing Yemen’s domestic food growing and supply. The sesame production chain is key.”

The researcher evaluated 86 presses around the country to learn what local small-scale sesame oil producers needed to upgrade. They identified power shortages and irregular availability as their top problem.

Limited oil press runtimes discourage sesame growers from increasing yields because pressers buy from them only what they can process. That puts a ceiling on the volume of sesame oil on hand for consumption and the need for laborers. Together, that spells smaller incomes for farmers, workers, pressers and vendors, and inadequate cooking oil availability for Yemen’s desperately underfed people.

The Need Now

Zakat Foundation grants enabled the bidding process for generators to begin in December. But port blockades and embargoes have prevented their timely purchase and arrival. Zakat Foundation’s Mercy-Corps partner has now widened the scope to bring generators online as fast as possible.

Raising cooking oil production will benefit Yemen’s hungry victims of conflict another way, by decreasing skyrocketing prices. In December, cooking oil costs shot up as much as 61 percent due to import dependency, siege, and degraded port capability through targeted violence.

As a result, Yemen’s rial currency lost half its value in January, from 250 rials to 500 per U.S. dollar. This makes it even harder for Yemen’s poor and beleaguered to afford food.