By CHARITY MOONGA –
AS a lower middle income country, Zambia has achieved an average annual growth of about 6.4 per cent, however, the country’s economic growth has not translated into significant poverty reduction.
Sixty per cent of the population still live below the poverty line and 42 per cent are considered to be in extreme poverty.
The World Bank has over the years played a significant role in supporting Zambia accelerate growth and reduce poverty.
As an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes, the World Bank has been supporting Zambia since 1955. The World Bank comprises two institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). It is a component of the World Bank Group, and a member of the United Nations Development Group.
By April 2014, IDA’s net commitments in Zambia totaled US$712.2 million for eleven active projects supporting agriculture, infrastructure, energy, environment, and human development. Agriculture continues to be the largest area of support.
For four years, 2013-2016, the World Bank Group’s strategy is aligned with the Zambian Government’s development priorities. The strategy supports reducing poverty and the vulnerability of the poor, improving competitiveness and infrastructure for growth and employment as well as improving governance and strengthening economic management.
The World Bank Group has set two goals for the world to achieve by 2030 which are to end extreme poverty by decreasing the percentage of people living on less than $1.25 a day to no more than 3 per cent and to promote shared prosperity by fostering the income growth of the bottom 40 per cent for every country.
Some of the significant programmes recently done by the World Bank in Zambia include assisting Zambia’s low-income households access electricity.
The Electricity Access for Low-income Households project in Zambia, to be funded through the Global Partnership on Output Based Aid (GPOBA) financing mechanism, administered by the World Bank, aims to support scaling up government’s strategy of increasing access to electricity in urban and peri-urban areas.
The Electricity Access for Low-income Households in Zambia Project will provide electricity access to 22,000 households and 5,000 Medium and Small Enterprises (MSEs) and introduce an OBA financing mechanism, whereby disbursements will be made against the independent verification of grid connections.
Under the Zambia – Lusaka Transmission and Distribution Rehabilitation Project Trust Fund, the bank will increase the capacity and improve the reliability of the electricity transmission and distribution system in the Lusaka area.
The World Bank also assisted Zambia in the South to South dialogue in which the Bank facilitated a peer to peer learning experience between Zambia and Chile to better understand how mineral wealth can be transformed into government revenues and how the financial resources can help to promote human development and alleviate poverty.
The Bank has also helped in the development of legislation on agricultural marketing, strengthening government capacity and reducing the cost of doing business in Zambia.
“The World Bank is a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world. We are not a bank in the ordinary sense but a unique partnership to reduce poverty and support development,” the Bank states.
In Zambia, the Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) 2013 – 2016 supports three objectives which includes reducing poverty and vulnerability by stimulating agricultural productivity and promoting agro-businesses, improving competitiveness through infrastructure investment and business-oriented regulatory reforms; and strengthening governance and economic management.
A portfolio of 16 Bank-financed operations represent net commitments of approximately US$800 million, with other arms of the World Bank Group extending additional commitments that bring the total to US$975 million.
In December 2014, the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved a US$75 million International Development Association (IDA) credit and US$25 million grant from the Government of Sweden to Zambia for the Kariba Dam Rehabilitation Project.
The project aims to assist the Zambezi River Authority in securing the long-term safety and reliability of the Kariba Dam Hydro-Electric Scheme.
The Bank also works with Africa External Communications and Partnerships (AFREC) which employs an extended team of professionals at World Bank headquarters and across country offices to support the over-arching goal of advancing inclusive growth in Africa. AFREC uses the full array of communications tools and methodologies to build awareness and understanding, and mobilise support for development goals.
The other programme by the World Bank in Zambia is the Livelihood and Nutrition Project.
Another project is the Lusaka Sanitation Project which hopes to increase access to sanitation services in selected areas of Lusaka and strengthen the Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company’s (LWSC) capacity to manage sanitation services.
It is hoped that this will improve public health through increased access to sanitation services supported by the World Bank Group through a US$65 million loan approved by its Board of Executive Directors.
The financing, provided by the IDA is for the Lusaka Sanitation Project which is the Bank’s contribution to the Government’s Lusaka Sanitation Program (LSP), which it is supporting together with three other development Partners.
Through the Lusaka Sanitation Project, the World Bank will support sewage collection, on-site sanitation, and institutional strengthening of the Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company (LWSC) which will implement the project.
The project will use US$38 million for sewerage improvements, specifically to upgrade and expand sewerage systems in the Ngwerere and Manchinchi sewersheds. Sewer networks will be expanded in Emmasdale, Chaisa, Chawama, Kuomboka and Garden neighborhoods and Kafue Road.
The Ngwerere Western Interceptor and Ngwerere Downstream Collector will be upgraded, while the Ngwerere Sewage Ponds will be extended.
About 180,000 people are expected to benefit from on-site sanitation facilities.
“In addition to infrastructure, the project will strengthen the capacity of the Government, through the Ministry of Local Government and Housing, and LWSC to implement the project, operate and maintain the facilities going forward, and to support the reforms needed to deliver sanitation services effectively and efficiently,” the Bank’s Task Team Leader for the Project Michael Webster says.
“We have confidence that this project will help Lusaka Water respond better to customer demand, protect ground water and avoid further water treatment costs that would have been passed onto our customers,” LWSC Managing Director George Ndongwe adds.
The project is expected to be implemented over a period of five years, closing in December 2020.
An additional project by the World Bank in Zambia is the assistance to adolescent girls from extremely poor households who will now have an opportunity to access secondary education while poor and vulnerable women will be economically empowered through a US$65 million loan approved by the World Bank Group’s Board of Executive Directors.
The financing, provided by the IDA, is for the Girls’ Education and Women’s Empowerment and Livelihoods Project, which is designed to support the Government increase access to livelihood support for women and access to secondary education for disadvantaged adolescent girls.
The main beneficiaries of the project will be about 75,000 women aged 19 to 64 who are fit for work, and about 14,000 adolescent girls aged 14 to 18 living in extremely poor households in rural areas.
“Through this support, the World Bank is keen to see more adolescent girls completing their secondary education and more rural women engaging in economically productive activities as these are critical steps to reducing rural poverty in Zambia,” the Bank said.
“The beneficiary women have varying needs so the provision of grants rather than pre-determined goods will give them the flexibility to decide how to allocate these resources according to their unique circumstances, which may encourage more productive investments,” says Minister of Community Development, Mother and Child Health Emerine Kabanshi said.
The second component of the project will support targeted adolescent girls by paying their secondary school fees as part of the support to the Keeping Girls in School Initiative.
The girls will be those from extremely poor households that are beneficiaries of the Social Cash Transfer Scheme who will enroll in a government secondary school. Their school fees will be paid directly to the schools by the Ministry of Education, Science, Vocational Training, and Early Education. The needy girls will be identified through the Ministry of Community Development, Mother and Child Health and about US$26 million has been allocated for this component.
A separate third component will help with institutional strengthening and systems building for the Ministry of Gender and Child Development and the Ministry of Community Development.
The Bank’s Task Team Leader for the project Cornelia Tesliuc says strengthening the capacity of these ministries will not only benefit the project but will also help develop systems and tools to increase the efficiency of the social protection sector, which is much needed in the implementation of the country’s recent social protection policy. The project is expected to close in September 2020.
And the Bank has assisted Zambia make corrections in many areas. The Bank’s 5th Zambia Economic Brief titled ‘Making Mining Work for Zambia: The Economic, Environmental and Health Nexus of Zambia’s Copper Mining Economy’ says: “The main challenge the World Bank sees for Zambia is strengthening fiscal policy so it firmly buoys inclusive growth and poverty reduction,” as Philip Schuler put it, the Bank’s Senior Country Economist for Zambia and co-author of the Brief.
The Brief observes that in recent times, government spending has been rising, resulting in budget deficits of at least 6 percent of GDP. The Brief recommends containing the growth of spending on salaries and subsidies to create fiscal space for programmes that reduce poverty.
The World Bank has since appointed Guang Zhe Chen, as the new Country Director for South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe from July 1, 2015, and he is based in Pretoria.
Prior to taking up this post, Mr Guang served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Ethiopia, a position he held since 2011, where he oversaw the implementation of a portfolio of investment and trust fund projects valued at over US$6 billion, as well as a robust programme of analytical works and technical assistance.
These covered a range of sectors including agriculture, social protection and infrastructure, as well as knowledge services and technical assistance programmes.
With Mr Guang in the driving seat, and other World Bank Group staff, it is hoped that the Bank will greatly contribute to fly developing countries like Zambia, higher.