NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

In July news broke that local micronutrient producers in Haiti were in danger of going out of business because of the actions of NGOs. The non-profit Meds & Food for Kids (MFK) came close to closure after the World Food Programme (WFP) said it wouldn’t be buying anything from the company for four years because they had a corn-soy blend from USAid – for free.

Providing emergency nutrition in a way that undermines the capacity of local economies to respond to food insecurity and malnutritionthemselves seems a clear violation of the ’do-no-harm’ principle.

Marie Konate is CEO of Protein-Kissee La, an Ivorian company producing fortified complementary food for the local market. She says NGOs in the west-African country have long prefered to buy products from rich multinationals rather than source locally.