The plan, announced two years ago, will see the African country’s top financial body boosting its reserves, apart from cushioning the domestic economy from risks in international financial markets.

“If all goes as planned, we should be able to purchase at least 100 kg of gold between March and June 2026. We are finalising with gold refineries that have been contracted to carry out fire assaying and ‌refining of gold to required purity levels,” Adam Mugume, executive director for research and economic analysis at the bank, told Reuters.

Spot gold jumped more than 2% on March 2 to USD 5,395.99 an ounce, amid concerns about the impact of US-Israel strikes on Iran, and most importantly, its fallout on the Middle East region, driving an investor ‌rush into safer assets. Adam Mugume did not say whether or how the price move would impact the plan.

On the other hand, on 3rd March, the US dollar rose to ⁠a ‌more than one-month high, which will likely make dollar-denominated commodities such as gold more expensive for buyers with other currencies.

Bullion has hit record highs in 2026 amid heightened geopolitical and economic uncertainties. Against this backdrop, central bankers in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo have also announced moves to diversify their reserves by buying gold.

Uganda exported USD 5.8 billion worth of gold in 2025, a 76% increase from 2024. The African country has already commissioned its first large-scale gold mine. The Chinese-owned facility is projected ‌to process 5,000 metric tons of gold ore per day and produce about 1.2 tons of refined gold a year.

“The central bank will purchase from artisanal miners as well as medium-scale and large-scale producers,” Mugume said.

Uganda set up its first bullion processor, “Africa Gold Refinery,” in 2017, and several others ‌have since been established, processing both locally produced gold and shipments from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

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With the help of these donors, WFP recently allocated US$180mn to some 60 country operations -while providing a vital and urgent boost to lifesaving efforts in Syria, Yemen, the Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo. These funds will also surge support to development projects and provide food assistance to refugees and displaced people.

“Flexible funds give us the freedom we need to respond more quickly, save on costs, plan for the longer term and prevent disruptions to our life-saving work,” said WFP Executive Director David Beasley. “To make the most of precious donor resources, we call on more of our government partners to provide funding that is unearmarked, predictable, and usable over multiple years.”

Whether beating back famine in South Sudan or saving lives of the Rohingya in the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis in Bangladesh, WFP is a vital component of the international response to pull people back from the brink of starvation.

Flexible funding allows the food organisation to act swiftly, effectively and efficiently, yet governments that provide this kind of funding are still very much in the minority as many specify how and where the money can be spent.

In 2017, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway and Germany led the way in providing multilateral funding to WFP. However, these kinds of contributions to it last year sat at just seven percent of the total resources provided to the organisation, well below a high-water mark of 20% of flexible funding in 2002.

The most recent allocations were made with contributions from Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Contributions from private sector partners were also part of this allocation.

Under the agreement known as the Grand Bargain concluded at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, leading donors committed to progressively reduce earmarking, with an aim of achieving a global target of 30% of humanitarian funding with fewer restrictions by 2020.

Top Ten Multilateral Donors and Funding Sources to WFP in 2017

(To see a full list of flexible contributions to WFP in 2017: https://www.wfp.org/funding/year/2017)

WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide, delivering food assistance in emergencies and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience. Each year, WFP assists 80mn people in around 80 countries.

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A humanitarian catastrophe is looming in the conflict-ravaged south-central Greater Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the head of the United Nations World Food Programme warned as he wrapped up a four-day mission to the central African country that included a visit to Kasai. Some 3.2 million people in the region are severely food insecure, struggling to feed themselves and in need of assistance.

“As many as 250,000 children could starve in Kasai in the next few months unless enough nutritious food reaches them quickly”, David Beasley said. “We need access to those children, and we need money – urgently.”

Kasai’s traditionally high rates of malnutrition were pushed higher following the eruption last year of inter-ethnic violence characterised by large-scale killing, the wholesale destruction of villages and crops, and the targeting of hospitals, clinics and schools. The region now accounts for more than 40 percent of the DRC’s 7.7 million severely food insecure.

WFP is ramping up emergency assistance there, planning to reach 500,000 of the most vulnerable by end-December, and many more early next year. Dozens more staff are being deployed, an additional 80 off-road trucks are being brought in to deliver food to remote areas, and the WFP-run United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), presently flying aid supplies and aid workers to seven locations in the region, is being expanded.

But WFP’s emergency operation, launched in August, has so far been financed by internal borrowings, and only one percent of the US$135 million required through mid-2018 has been secured from the international community.

While the violence in Kasai has diminished in recent weeks, banditry and extortion are commonplace. Moreover, in a region the size of Germany with multiple active militias and a road network that is largely impassable during the September-December rainy season, humanitarian access is set to remain a challenge.

WFP’s work in eastern North Kivu province, also witnessed by Beasley, is likewise constrained by access challenges and limited funding. Just 250,000 of the province’s one million displaced people – victims of two decades of conflict – are receiving assistance, and only half rations.

Much of DRC’s population is dependent on subsistence farming, and competition for land is often at the heart of its violence. Many conflict-displaced families who had returned to their villages in North Kivu and Kasai told Beasley they could not resume working their fields, such was their fear still of being attacked.

“I have met too many women and children whose lives have been reduced to a desperate struggle for survival”, Beasley said. “In a land so rich in resources, that’s heart-breaking. And it’s unacceptable.”

Beasley acknowledged donor concerns about limited return on investments in a better future for the Congolese people, noting that some governments have threatened to redirect such funding to countries where they say it will have more impact.

“I hear those concerns”, Beasley said. “But let’s not hold innocent women and children responsible for the failings of others”.

“What the brave people I met over the last few days want most of all is peace – peace to be able to grow their own food, to rebuild their lives and to build a brighter tomorrow for their children. It’s a simple, powerful message.  I have conveyed it to President Kabila and members of his government, urging that they do more to help this come about.’’

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Samuel Okocha

September 3, 2014: Last week, Nigeria reported its first Ebola death outside Lagos. A doctor died of the disease in the southern oil-rich city of Port Harcourt. The doctor was treating an Ebola patient who escaped quarantine from Lagos. The patient survived, but the doctor died.

“Two other contacts of the late Port Harcourt doctor, one of the doctors who managed him and a pharmacy technician working in the doctor’s hospital, are symptomatic and have been admitted to the isolation ward in Rivers,” Nigeria’s health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told newspersons on Monday. That brings the country’s total confirmed infections to 16, with around 200 people under surveillance, according to the health minister.

Before this incident, Nigerian health authorities  announced that they had successfully contained the outbreak. The UN also commended Nigeria over its tackling of the problem.

In Liberia, President Johnson Sirleaf warned the crisis will likely worsen in the coming weeks, as the ministry of health reported 11 new cases and 35 deaths. New cases of infection have also been reported in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

More than 1,550 people have now died, with more than 3,000 confirmed cases — mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Senegal recently confirmed a first case of Ebola after an infected student who has lost three family members to the disease arrived from neighbouring Guinea. Senegalese authorities are now monitoring everyone who was in contact with the young man who had defied a border closure to cross into the country by road. This case makes Senegal the fifth country affected by the Ebola outbreak.

Last week, West Africa’s health ministers concluded a meeting in Ghana with a call on member states to re-open their borders and end flight bans put in place to stop the spread of Ebola. The health ministers believe excessive travel restrictions will have a negative effect on the economy of the sub-region. They also appealed to airlines to resume operations to Ebola-affected countries to ensure availability of supplies and personnel to contain the spread of the deadly disease.

Meanwhile, the WHO is investigating an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are 24 suspected cases and 13 deaths, according to the UN health body. Reports say the outbreak is unrelated to the one in West Africa.

Earlier Report: Ebola ruins summer of Africa

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