From crisis to safety: WFP supports Sudanese refugees in making a fresh start in Rwanda
Hundreds of Sudanese asylum seekers have found shelter from war and hunger at a settlement in eastern Rwanda
By Raissa Iradukunda
Samar, 28, never expected to find herself so far from home. Not so long ago, she was living with her mother and siblings in Sudan. Today, she’s living in the Mahama refugee settlement in eastern Rwanda — a sprawling collection of mud-brick houses near the Tanzanian border — and over 2,500 km from her native country.
“We came to Rwanda because this is a safe country,” Samar says, standing outside the house she has been sharing with her family since their arrival in July 2024 — more than a year after Sudan’s civil war broke out.
The war is only the latest chapter in the country’s unrest that has uprooted Samar’s family before. “Every time, we moved from one village to another,” says Samar, who hails from South Darfur. “But with the recent war in 2023,” she adds, “we lost our home and everything we had.”
Samar counts among some 400 Sudanese who have made the long trek to reach Mahama over the past year — joining some 67,000 fellow asylum seekers and refugees who largely come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi. The World Food Programme (WFP), in partnership with the Rwandan Government and UNHCR, supports all of them with daily cooked meals as they wait for their refugee status to be approved.
These meals are essential not only for physical nourishment, but also for restoring a sense of dignity and normalcy in the lives of those who have lost so much. Once they register as refugees, the newcomers shift from food to cash assistance, which offers them more flexibility. WFP also prevents and treats malnutrition among pregnant and breastfeeding women, young children, and people living with HIV and tuberculosis; and supports kitchen gardens and self-reliance activities to increase refugees’ and asylum seekers’ access to nutritious food.
“We are not just providing food and cash; we are helping people regain their strength, their hope, and their ability to move forward,” says Andrea Bagnoli, WFP’s Representative and Country Director in Rwanda. “The support of our donors has been crucial in making this possible. Every meal we provide, every dollar of cash assistance, helps individuals rebuild their lives and reclaim their dignity.”
Rwanda’s Government helps the Sudanese and other newcomers make the transition. Unlike many other host countries, refugees are allowed to work in Rwanda. They also have access to education and healthcare.
“The first thing I was looking for was medication for my son, who has anemia,” says 27-year-old Sudanese mother and asylum seeker Zahra. “I have already lost two children due to this illness.”
Like Samar, she is another survivor of Sudan’s brutal civil war. She arrived in Mahama in August 2024 with her husband Hassan and their four children, after a harrowing, 2,800-kilometre journey from Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.
The two daily WFP meals of rice, beans and maize that Zahra’s family receives are plentiful, but lack nutritious diversity. That is especially difficult for her anemic 12-year-old son, Mohamed. “The thing he needs most is food, fruits,” Zahra says. If the family receives refugee status, they will be able to buy the fresh produce they need with the WFP cash assistance.
Thanks to a blood transfusion and medical treatment at a hospital in the Mahama settlement, however, Mohamed has recovered and is back in school, which brought relief to his parents.
“The situation here in Mahama is good,” Mohamed’s father, Hassan, says. This is at least a safe country.”
Another Sudanese refugee, Musa, fled unrest in his home city of Geneina, in Sudan’s West Darfur state, before he could complete his education. He went to Khartoum in the hope of finding work to support his younger siblings. However, the outbreak of the war in 2023 sent him on the road again, and he eventually reached Rwanda in 2024 — 3,000 km from Geneina. A year after arriving as an asylum seeker in Mahama, Musa was granted refugee status, and his WFP assistance switched to monthly cash transfers.
Still, he says, it’s difficult to make the cash last through the month, especially since he cannot rely on support from relatives back in his war-torn homeland. To cope, he and a few other Sudanese men pool their money each month and buy food together. “Life requires solidarity. We gather, share meals, and survive,” Musa says.
Musa also hopes to resume his secondary education in Mahama that he could not finish back home.
As the world continues to experience conflict and displacement, the stories of people like Samar, Zahara, Hassan and Musa highlight the critical need for sustained humanitarian assistance. This will enable WFP to not only address the immediate needs of refugees and asylum seekers, but also support them towards self-sufficiency.
WFP’s support to refugees and asylum seekers in Rwanda is made possible through the support of generous donors such as Germany, the European Union (ECHO), Japan and the United States.
