Zambia Country Assistance Plan

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DFID is developing a country assistance plan to guide our development partnership with Zambia for the next 3-5 years. The plan will be agreed by Ministers and will set out:

• Our overall strategy to help Zambia achieve the Millennium Development Goals;
• Those parts of Zambia’s Fifth National Development Plan on which we will focus our assistance;
• What we will not do and leave to other donors;
• How we will manage our own human and financial resources; and
• How we will monitor and measure our progress in achieving our objectives.

DFID is presently inviting public comments to feed into the planning process.

Specific questions and details for submitting comments are set out below:

What is the Country Planning Process?

The DFID Zambia Country Planning Process will help us decide how we support Zambia’s efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) over the next 3-5 years. We will produce a business plan to guide our use of resources and advice and to show how we intend to support Zambia’s national development strategy, the Fifth National Development Plan (FNDP)(4,000 kb)

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How will we support Zambia’s own efforts to reduce poverty?

In response to the FNDP, sixteen donors, including DFID, developed the Joint Assistance Strategy for Zambia (JASZ)(916 kb): Annex1(43 kb), Annex 2(116 kb), Annex 3(40 kb), Annex 4(28 kb). The JASZ runs from 2007 to 2010 and sets out our collective analysis of the development challenges in Zambia, the key areas we should focus on, and how we as donors will support Zambia to achieve the goals set out in the FNDP. Its main objectives are to:

• Establish guidelines for donors on how we should support the Government’s own priorities;
• Reduce the burden on the Government by cutting the different demands made of them by the many donors in country;
• Improve the way aid is given, by reducing duplication of effort by donors and getting each of them to concentrate on a few key areas;
• Make aid more predictable and tell the Government in advance what they can expect from each donor;
• Replace donors’ individual country strategies, or at least bring them more into line, with FNDP priorities; and
• Pay extra attention to how well aid works and how we measure it.

Under the JASZ, DFID has agreed with Government and other donors to focus on five key areas:

• Health;
• HIV and AIDS;
• Governance;
• Macroeconomics; and
• Social protection.

DFID has also made a 10 year commitment to provide financial and technical assistance to the Government of Zambia to help it tackle continuing development challenges. This commits the UK to providing at least £40 million of development assistance per year to Zambia, with at least half of that going through the Government’s own budget in the form of Poverty Reduction Budget Support (PRBS).

The 10 Year Partnership Arrangement(30 kb)

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How can you find out more about DFID’s current work in Zambia?

Go to the Zambia Country page

How can you contribute to the Country Planning Process?

We would welcome your views and opinions to help us answer the following questions:

1. Do you agree that DFID should assist Zambia in the broad areas outlined above? Do you agree with the general approach described in the Joint Assistance Strategy and Fifth National Development Plan?

2. Within the sectors DFID has agreed to focus on, are there issues or areas we should concentrate on to maximise our impact and assistance?

3. How can we best work with the Zambian Government to reduce poverty and deliver the MDGs? How can we best measure and monitor progress?

There are also a number of more specific questions on which we invite comments:

4. How can we help to make the Zambian budget process effective in addressing poverty reduction and achieving the MDGs?

5. What is the role we, as one of the largest providers of budget support to Zambia, can and should play?

6. What is our role in increasing Zambia's economic growth and in ensuring that it helps the poor and is environmentally sustainable?

7. How should we better support gender equality and women’s rights?

8. How can we work with the Zambian Government to improve accountability to Zambian citizens, including making Zambia's Parliament more effective and independent?

9. What else can we do to improve the transparency of Government finances and reduce the risk of corruption within the public service?

10. What more can we do to strengthen the voice of non government organisations in the development process?

11. How can we help the Zambian Government and partners to address the huge development challenge of HIV/AIDS?

12. What is our role in helping large disease-specific funders to support coordinated national HIV/AIDS plans e.g. Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria?

13. How can we increase access by poor and vulnerable women to maternal health services?

14. How do we ensure that economic and social development reaches the poorest and most vulnerable, given low support for social protection in the national budget?

If you have responses to any of these questions, or indeed any other points or comments you wish to make, please send your response to the following e-mail address: DFIDZambiaCAP@dfid.gov.uk

Please send us your comments by 27 July 2008 when the consultation process will end. We are very grateful for your comments but cannot provide a response to all of them.

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