Exclusive: WFP to cut up to 30% of staff amid aid shortfall

The World Food Programme plans to cut over a quarter of its workforce by next year, according to an all-staff email sent Thursday and seen by Devex. “Following a series of meetings where the Leadership Team reviewed all aspects of our situation, we concluded that WFP must reduce its worldwide workforce by 25-30%, which could impact up to 6,000 roles as we prepare for 2026,” Stephen Omollo, WFP's assistant executive director for workplace and management, said in the email. WFP has been in the midst of a funding crisis for some time, with international support waning in recent years. But drastic cuts to U.S. government funding through USAID in recent months have pushed the organization over the edge. The U.S. is WFP’s largest donor, contributing 46% of the agency’s budget in 2024. That year WFP — which is funded entirely through voluntary donations from governments, individuals, and the private sector — received a total of $9.75 billion in contributions. And this comes as hunger crises escalate around the world, especially in conflict hot spots such as Sudan and Gaza. WFP has lately cut rations in several countries in direct response to the terminations of its USAID contracts, leading to protests in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp. The USAID cuts have led to mass confusion at WFP, as its work was labeled “lifesaving” and thus safe from the Trump administration’s foreign aid cuts — but some of its contracts were terminated anyway, and in some cases reinstated and then canceled again. Rumors about major changes have been circulating for months. In February, WFP leadership told staff it would close its regional bureau for Southern Africa and consolidate it with its Eastern Africa bureau in Nairobi by the end of this year. “As the Executive Director shared in her April 11th message, our current 2025 donor funding outlook is $6.4B, which represents a 40% reduction compared to last year. We remain concerned that the situation shows no signs of improving,” Omollo wrote in the email Thursday. The agency had previously said it needed $16.9 billion to fund its operations in 2025. “As part of this workforce downsizing, WFP will be offering agreed separation packages with broader eligibility criteria than historically offered.” By the end of 2022, WFP, the world’s largest humanitarian organization, had 23,266 employees worldwide. “In this challenging donor environment, WFP will prioritize its limited resources on vital programs that bring urgently needed food assistance to the 343 million people struggling with hunger, and increasingly facing starvation,” a WFP spokesperson said in response to Devex questions about the cuts on Friday. The news comes in the same week WFP issued new dire warnings about funding shortfalls in Ethiopia, saying on Tuesday that without urgent new funding, 3.6 million of Ethiopia’s most vulnerable people will lose access to WFP’s lifesaving food and nutrition assistance in the coming weeks. The organization was already forced to halt treatment for 650,000 malnourished women and children last May due to insufficient funding, it said in a statement. Meanwhile, warnings out of Sudan are growing increasingly urgent. WFP urgently needs $650 million to continue operations in Sudan for the next six months, as half the population — 24.6 million people — faces acute hunger and about 638,000 people face “catastrophic” hunger, meaning famine, according to the International Food Security Phase Classification, the globally accepted scale for measuring hunger crises. “What I saw was absolutely devastating,” Samantha Chattaraj, WFP’s emergency coordinator for Sudan, said in a statement to the press Friday detailing her visit to Khartoum. She highlighted operational breakthroughs for WFP in Sudan, where the agency has managed to access previously unreached parts of the country — successfully sending 800 metric tons of food to famine-affected areas in the Western Nuba Mountains, supporting 64,000 people for the first time since the conflict began. “Levels of hunger and desperation are extremely high — yet people remain hopeful.”