Zambia Country Programme (2016-2020)

This operation has been modified as per Budget Revision 3 (see below)

Zambia is a lower-middle income country with strong economic growth, but this has not resulted in improved nutrition and food security or equitable social development. WFP has adopted strategies to support the country’s vision to become an industrial middle-income country by 2030.

In line with evaluations of the previous country programme and the United Nations Development Assistance Framework, and in dialogue with stakeholders, country programme 200891 will continue the transition from direct implementation towards technical assistance to the Government. The Government supports WFP’s innovative approach to development programming and its focus on increased national ownership.

Technical assistance will focus on the implementation of long-term programmes such as social protection, nutrition governance for nutrition-sensitive programming and building disaster resilience. These areas are in line with the Government’s agenda to reduce poverty and malnutrition and reflect the fact that funds for direct food distribution are increasingly scarce in Zambia.

Country programme 200891 has three components: i) home-grown school feeding; ii) nutrition; and iii) resilience-building. WFP will provide technical assistance for all three components. It will phase out direct food delivery in the home-grown school feeding programme and re-position it to focus on producing and locally procuring nutritious foods, which will provide a market for smallholder farmers. The Government is committed to increasing its financial contribution to the home-grown school feeding programme to reach 2 million primary-school learners by 2020. 

The country programme will target primary-school learners, vulnerable adolescent girls, smallholder farming communities and government institutions. Nutrition, gender and protection, and HIV will be mainstreamed in all activities implemented to reach these groups. WFP is using community-led participatory processes, the United Nations country analysis and capacity gap assessments to identify activities, and target districts and populations for support, in line with the Government’s decentralization policy.

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BR 03 to Zambia Country Programme 200891 will reduce the length of the programme by 18 months (from December 2020 to June 2019) to align with the implementation of the Zambia Transitional Interim Country Strategic Plan (T-ICSP) which will run from January 2018 to June 2019.