WFP Zambia Country Brief, October 2021

In Numbers

5.415 mt food assistance distributed

US$ 188,554 cash-based transfers made

US$ 873,422 six-month (November 2021 – April 2022) net funding requirements

132,095 people assisted in October 2021

Operational Updates

In October, WFP assisted 132,095 people through its integrated package of programmes. Out of the assisted, 17,729 refugees and asylum seekers from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) received cash and in-kind food assistance; 23,344 people through nutrition support interventions; 73,592 smallholder farmers through early recovery and resilience strengthening activities; and 17,430 people reached through capacity strengthening and social protection interventions.

The WFP-supported Virtual Farmers Market (VFM) mobile application was in October recognised by the Bank of Zambia for its role in fostering financial inclusion among smallholders in rural areas. This e-commerce platform, which enables smallholder farmers and buyers to exchange market information and trade surplus commodities, was awarded the Governor’s Award by the central bank for its potential to be scaled up and role in bridging the financial literacy gap among rural communities. Meanwhile, WFP has continued to enhance the VFM, integrating an insurance module into the application to facilitate smallholder farmers’ access to insurance products. A meeting was held with provincial agriculture coordinators from the 10 provinces to introduce the new VFM feature and draw a plan for creating awareness and registering smallholders to access insurance products via the application.

WFP has continued to explore ways of integrating nutrition, gender and HIV in its financial inclusion interventions. As part of this, WFP facilitated the training of trainers’ workshop for 58 district and provincial staff (53 percent women) from the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Community Development and Social Services, private sector and project staff from Western and Southern provinces to build their capacities in mainstreaming nutrition, gender and HIV aspects in the savings groups. The workshops were held in Chipata, Kabwe and Livingstone. The trained staff would in turn train animators and community development facilitators.

As part of continued efforts to strengthen the capacity of the Government and enable it to fully own and implement the Home-Grown School Meals (HGSM) programme, WFP facilitated four trainings on decentralized procurement, targeting 11 districts with over 90 district and provincial staff trained. Participants were from ministries of education, agriculture, commerce and trade, health, as well as community development and social services from 11 districts in four provinces (Central, Eastern, Southern and Western). Decentralised procurement is a critical element of the HGSM strategy, which was developed with WFP support to transform school feeding into a nationally owned programme while linking schools to local smallholder farmers and providing a market for their produce.

To ensure the social protection systems are enhanced, WFP is working with UNICEF under the United Nations Joint Programme on Social Protection to strengthen community managed early warning systems in selected districts. In October, 40 rain gauges were installed in Kaoma, Mongu and Sioma districts of Western Province and Chikankata,

Kalomo, and Monze districts of Southern Province and 93 rain gauge minders were trained. Through the rain gauges, community members will be collecting, analysing and disseminating climate information to help smallholder farmers to make better decisions on when to prepare land and to plant crops, thereby contributing to their resilience against climatic shocks. As the 2021/22 agricultural season approaches, WFP through the trained rain gauge minders has disseminated climate information to about 40,000 smallholder farmers.

WFP has partnered with Good Nature Agro to promote the production of nutrient dense crops and has since facilitated the establishment of an out-grower scheme targeting smallholder farmers who produce groundnuts and beans in Chibombo, Katete, Lundazi and Petauke districts. So far, 432 smallholder farmers have been enrolled on the scheme. Good Nature Agro is providing the legume seed and has guaranteed to buy the harvested crop from the smallholders at prevailing market prices during the 2022/23 marketing season.

Source: World Food Programme