South Sudanese women and children wait for humanitarian assistance in Bor. File photo.

The World Bank has approved 40 million US dollars to provide income support to 65,000 households in South Sudan.

The grant from the World Bank’s International Development Association will fund a two and half years project to provide income support to nearly 430,000 low-income South Sudanese.

The Project will provide income security to the most vulnerable households – including households with people with extreme vulnerabilities, such as persons with disabilities, the elderly, expectant women, and those living with HIV/AIDS amongst others.

It will be implemented by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in South Sudan.

In a statement, UNOPS says it will deliver the South Sudan Safety Net Project, in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Ministry of Gender and Social Welfare and the Ministry of Finance and planning to ensure that low income and vulnerable people are provided with reliable access to income opportunities and temporary employment.

The Project comes at the unprecedented time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

UNOPS also said in order to adapt the project to the COVID-19 context and address rising socio-economic vulnerability, the project will rapidly roll-out immediate ‘direct income support’ and respond to the economic impact of COVID-19 on the lives of the vulnerable communities.

The World Bank’s Country Manager for South Sudan, Husam Abudagga, said in the first phase, the Safety Net Project will scale up direct income support in Juba to provide rapid cash transfers to address emerging vulnerabilities amidst COVID 19 outbreak.

As the COVID-19 situation subsidies, cash transfers will be expanded in all the other nine project locations across the country. However, the statement did not mention the nine project locations.

For her part, South Sudan’s new Minister of Agriculture and Food Security-Josephine Joseph Lagu, says the additional funding will be used to build on the achievements of previous safety net projects while scaling up the provision of predictable and reliable cash transfers to vulnerable South Sudanese.

“This will not only improve food security for thousands of people, but it will also increase their resilience to economic and climate-related crises or shocks,” she added.