WFP Executive Director to participate in African Union Summit

Sheeran will make a presentation on the impact high food and fuel prices are having on the world's most vulnerable and hungry, and the immediate and longer-term actions needed to tackle urgent challenges ahead.

Millions of people are being pushed deeper into poverty and hunger, with purchasing power being severely cut due to a doubling in food and fuel prices.

Sheeran became the eleventh Executive Director of WFP in April 2007.

Before joining the UN food agency, she served as Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs at the United States Department of State.

Sheeran has a 20-year proven track record as a management leader as well as a distinguished background in media.

During her tenure as managing editor of a U.S. major newspaper, she was a regular commentator on television news programmes and twice served as a Pulitzer Prize juror, including for foreign reporting.

WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency: this year, WFP plans to feed an average of 90 million people in 78 countries.