Chakki

Despite progress, Pakistan's nutrition and hunger situation remains serious, ranking 109th out of 127 countries in the 2024 Global Hunger Index. It struggles with high multidimensional poverty. Nearly half of an average household’s monthly expenditure goes towards food, and 82 percent of the population cannot afford a healthy diet. A total of 18 percent of children under five suffer from acute malnutrition, and around 40 percent of children are stunted (impaired growth due to malnutrition).

Food fortification, a key strategy to combat malnutrition, involves adding vitamins and minerals to commonly eaten foods. Fortification is generally done via large-scale production systems. In Pakistan, however, most people, including the poorest and most at risk of malnutrition, buy their wheat flour from one of the country’s 70,000 small-scale mills, called chakkis.

Chakki is an innovative approach to improving nutrition by fortifying wheat flour consumed in Pakistan. It equips small-scale mills, or chakkis, with innovative technology, skills and funding mechanisms to fortify flour, educate their clients, and tackle malnutrition nationwide.

 Chakki aims to strengthen and extend the enabling environment, regulatory monitoring and enforce food fortification in partnership with the public sector. It also aims to expand and sustain wheat flour and rice fortification in compliance with national fortification standards and strengthen the design, quality assurance, monitoring and evaluation of food fortification programmes.Garnering and mobilizing global commitment, leadership, and resources to scale wheat flour and rice fortification.

WFP launched Chakki in 2019 to scale the fortification of whole wheat flour milled by chakkis in cooperation with public-private partners. WFP supports over 150 small-scale chakkis across 22 districts in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Islamabad to produce fortified wheat flour for local consumers. 

Chakki has supported the fortification of over 696 megatons of flour, representing 83 percent of commercial production in the two pilot districts of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Over 3 million people in Pakistan consumed fortified flour purchased from the supported flour mills.

Chakki became an alumnus of the WFP Innovation Accelerator Scale-Up Enablement programme in 2024. 

Chakki and WFP aim to further increase the mills enrolled in the 22 districts and implement sustainable models for continued operations.