No fewer than 930 households comprising 4,600 residents have benefitted from 20 World Food Programme (WFP)-sponsored income generating activities in Malakyararai in Borno State.

The project started in the community last year and the beneficiaries received WFP cash, other inputs and training in the different income generating activities.

They also received basic training in business and financial management and records keeping to empower them with the knowledge to manage their small businesses.

They were equally linked with markets to ensure that they could sell their products both within and outside their communities.

A statement issued by the national communications officer of WFP, Dr Kelechi Onyemaobi, said the trainees were linked with Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) where they could get some revolving loans to scale up their businesses.

Onyemaobi recalled that Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps in various parts of Maiduguri, Borno State "bubbled with livelihood activities just before they shut down in August 2022 - as the men and women perfected new skills that would help them to feed their families when they returned to their home communities."

He said WFP worked with partners and government authorities to assist the IDPs to learn new skills in farming, aquaculture, food processing, tailoring, shoe-making, soap-making, carpentry and other activities that will enable them to generate income and rebuild their lives even as they return to their home communities.

According to him, these livelihood activities, delivered by WFP and its partners to the IDPs, were a major aspect of WFP's mandate of "saving lives and changing lives" among the vulnerable people and communities it serves in Nigeria.