SDGPP in Zambia

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), otherwise known as the Global Goals, are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

These 17 Goals build on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals, while including new areas such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace and justice, among other priorities. The goals are interconnected – often the key to success on one will involve tackling issues more commonly associated with another.

The SDGs work in the spirit of partnership and pragmatism to make the right choices now to improve life, in a sustainable way, for future generations. They provide clear guidelines and targets for all countries to adopt in accordance with their own priorities and the environmental challenges of the world at large. The SDGs are an inclusive agenda. They tackle the root causes of poverty and unite us together to make a positive change for both people and planet.

Progress:

• Decline in extreme poverty, but at a slow pace (National Poverty Incidence 54.4%);
• Strengthened social protection interventions: social cash transfer, school feeding and the food security pack, targeting the extreme poor and vulnerable households.

Challenges:

• High inequality rates (Gini Coefficient: 0.69 in 2015);
• High poverty rates in rural areas (Rural: 76.6 Urban: 23.4%).

SDG Priorities:

• Addressing inequalities between rural and urban areas;
• Implementing nationally appropriate social protection systems to reach the poor and vulnerable.

Progress:

• Implementation of social protection interventions including the social cash transfer, school feeding, and food security pack targeting extreme poor and vulnerable households;
• Implementation of Farmer Input Support Programme to help small-scale farmers ensure their own domestic food security and graduation.

Challenges:

• High stunting, wasting, and underweight levels (40%, 6%, 15%, respectively in 2013-14);
• Some social protection schemes only reached a marginal proportion of the poor and vulnerable, many left behind;
• Poor targeting of recipients and inefficiencies in ensuring timely supply of inputs.

SDG priorities:

• Improving targeting of social protection interventions to ensure they reach the poorest and most vulnerable;
• Improving feeding and nutrition practices and programmes;
• Improving targeting of the beneficiaries and efficiency of the Farmer Input Support Programme;
• Improving on-farm agricultural productivity and linking rural and poor farmers to markets;
• Modernizing the agriculture sector and prioritizing value addition.

Progress:

• Improvements in reducing infant mortality rates (95 to 45 deaths per 1,000 live births from 2007 to 2013-14);
• Improvements in immunization coverage, breast-feeding, vitamin/mineral supplementation, malaria prevention and treatment;
• Decline in maternal mortality rates (398 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2013-14 down from 591);
• Drop in HIV prevalence rate (14.3% in 2007, 13.3% in 2013-14);
• Improvement in control and prevention of malaria.

Challenges:

• Infant mortality rate remains very high; 
• Maternal mortality rate remains very high;
• Difficulties in accessing health facilities in rural areas;
• Difficulties in controlling malaria and related deaths;
• Difficulties in lowering the prevalence of HIV/AIDS coupled with uneven progress between genders and regions;
• Rise in non-communicable diseases;
• Improperly skilled health workforce.

SDG priorities:

• Improving access to quality health care – improving health service delivery, increasing infrastructure development, expanding health workforce, building more health facilities;
• Accelerating human resource outputs, recruitment, and retention;
• Promoting private sector participation in health care delivery;
• Upscaling interventions in maternal education, nutritional status, contraception for birth spacing, prevention of early marriages;
• Improving referral systems, provision/access to emergency obstetric care, deployment of better trained midwifes & birth attendees;
• Creating domestic model for financing HIV/AIDS interventions;
• Addressing increase in non-communicable diseases;
• Accelerating fertility reduction and improving child survival interventions;
• Eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV and improving child nutrition.

Progress:

• Improvement in achieving universal primary education (primary education net enrollment rate 89% in 2015);
• Increased investments in education, introduction of free primary education.

Challenges:

• Limited access to Early Childhood Education (ECE), with only 18% of those enrolled in grade one have had pre-school education, situation worse in rural areas (UNICEF, 2013);
• Quality of education needs further improvement;
• Secondary and tertiary enrollment rates are still very low, with progression rates between grade 7 to grade 8 are 64.5% and 46.2% from grade 9 to 10 (7th National Development Plan, 2017);
• Gender parity drops at secondary school level (84 girls for every 100 boys enrolled).

SDG priorities:

• Promoting inclusive and integrated Early Childhood Development including Early Childhood Education;
• Increasing progression rates between primary and senior secondary schools (Primary net enrollment 89%, secondary education net enrollment 28.1% - 2015);
• Increasing enrollment in tertiary institutions (7.6% tertiary completion rate – 2010); 
• Increasing access, participation, quality and relevance of education; 
• Increasing equity in formal and informal education;
• Enhancing access to skills training by rolling out and scaling up the new curriculum that integrates Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) with general education.

Progress:

• Improvement in gender parity in primary school enrollment and literacy.

Challenges:

• Women have fewer decision making positions compared to men at all levels;
• Women are disproportionately affected by high unemployment and poverty, resulting in greater income inequality;
• Women have differentiated access to credit, land and extension services, which constrain agricultural productivity and other economic activities;
• High rates of teen pregnancies and child marriages.

SDG Priorities:

• Focusing on gender parity in secondary and tertiary education;
• Addressing issues hampering girl-child education including preventing teenage pregnancies and ending child marriages;
• Strengthening female participation and leadership including political participation;
• Improving women’s and girls' equal access to education, health care, and decent work;
• Scaling-up women’s economic empowerment programmes, gender mainstreaming.

Progress:

• Increased access to improved water sources (58% in 2006 to 67.7% in 2015).

Challenges:

• Uneven access to improved water sources between urban (89.2%) and rural areas (51.6%);
• Low access to improved sources of sanitation (40% of households in 2015, 27% of people in urban areas and 85% in rural areas had no access to improved sources of sanitation in 2015);
• Decline in quality of water sanitation facilities in urban areas due to increase in informal settlements, cost of sanitation infrastructure, low private sector investment owing to low investment returns in the sector;
• Deforestation adversely affecting water catchment areas and thus is a growing concern.

SDG Priorities:

• Increasing levels of access to clean and safe water and sanitation services for people in rural and urban areas;
• Improving availability of water and sanitation infrastructure;
• Improving provision of solid waste management services;
• Enhancing research in water supply and sanitation services.

Progress:

• Increased investment in expanding power generation;
• Access to electricity for households nationally improved from 22% in 2010 to 31% in 2015.

Challenges:

• Lack of diversification of the energy mix with over-reliance on hydro-electricity;
• Limited access to energy resources particularly in rural areas where access to electricity stands at only about 4.4% (2015);
• Low energy efficiency among energy consumers.

SDG priorities:

• Scaling-up investment in electricity generation;
• Diversifying the energy mix with more focus on renewable energy;
• Working towards improving energy management practices and improving efficiency in energy utilization.

Progress:

• Transitioned to a lower middle-income country;
• Opening of international financial markets;
• Inflows of FDI to the mining sector.

Challenges:

• Continued heavy reliance on copper mining for export revenue;
• Reduced access to lending and ODA;
• Low employment creation and high levels of informal work (84% of working population in informal sector (91.2% females, 75.8% males) (2014 Labour Force Survey);
• High youth unemployment rate (10.5% in 2014, rural youth unemployment rate 6.4%, urban youth unemployment rate 15.2%).

SDG priorities:

• Promoting economic and export diversification;
• Diversifying the economy away from mining, re-focusing on agriculture and tourism sectors for poverty reduction and employment creation;
• Implementing employment creation interventions that reduce informality of work and improve decent work conditions, especially in rural areas;
• Creating an enabling environment for sustainable and inclusive social economic development, through, among other things, development of linkages;
• Facilitating micro, small, and medium enterprise and cooperatives development;
• Promoting entrepreneurship skills training and development; 
• Advancing Labour Law reform.

Progress:

• Improved trade facilitation infrastructure, especially roads;
• Improved quality of infrastructure (nationally).

Challenges:

• Limited investment in other trade facilitation infrastructure (railways, border posts);
• Limited investment in technology, innovation, research and development (Zambia ranked 125th out of 128 countries in the 2016 Global Innovation Index (7NDP Vol 1);
• Weak intersectoral linkages.

SDG priorities:

• Scaling-up investment in trade facilitation infrastructure;
• Scaling-up investment in technology, innovation, research and development;
• Strengthening intersectoral linkages (e.g. between manufacturing and primary agriculture);
• Promoting industrial upgrading.

Challenges: 

• Large inequalities between rural and urban areas, including income inequalities (Gini coefficient increased from 0.60 in 2006 to 0.69 in 2015).

SDG priorities:

• Reducing gender and income inequalities – enhancing income opportunities, addressing infrastructure deficits, and ensuring access to services for poor and marginalized groups;
• Reducing inequalities faced by the elderly and disabled;
• Promoting integrated rural development - infrastructure, services, etc.;
• Promoting urban and peri-urban economies.

Progress:

• Increased appreciation of the concept of green buildings and planned settlements;
• Increase in number of planned settlements in selected cities.

Challenges: 

• Increase in number of unplanned settlements in selected cities;
• Limited investment in green buildings and low cost housing.

SDG priorities:

• Promoting the concept of green buildings and planned settlements; 
• Increasing investment in green buildings and low cost housing;
• Promoting private sector investment in planned settlements;
• Promoting low cost, modern building technologies.

Progress:

• Organic and climate smart agriculture and processing poised for growth.

Challenges:

• Climate shocks negatively affecting yield rates for crops;
• Decline in quantities of fish harvested;
• Destructive fishing methods.

SDG priorities:

• Promoting organic, climate smart agriculture;
• Diversifying the agriculture sector;
• Promoting sustainable, non-destructive fishing methods.

Progress:

• Ratification of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC);
• Resource mobilization for priorities in the NDC;
• Reduction in rate of deforestation.

Challenges:

• Effects of climate change: droughts, rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall patterns -  affecting the economy and people’s livelihoods;
• Impact of climate change costs Zambia 0.4% of annual growth, with ability to increase to 0.9%.

SDG priorities:

• Undertaking climate change mitigation and adaptation measures to promote social well-being, including better health, growth of the economy, and reduction of environmental risks such as shortage of water, air pollution, and other effects.

N/A

Progress:

• Forthcoming

Challenges: 

• Increase in deforestation.

SDG Priorities:

• Promoting reforestation and sustainable practices.

Progress:

• Amendment of the Zambian Constitution;
• Establishment of the Small Claims Court.

Challenges:

• Inadequacies and inconsistencies in the regulatory framework and policy environment, access to justice, transparency and accountability, democratization and slow place of implementation of decentralization reforms;
• High level of corruption (38/100 on Corruption Perception Index and 76th out of 138 countries).

SDG priorities:

• Improving the policy environment;
• Improving transparency and accountability in the delivery of public services;
• Establishing an inclusive democratic system of governance;
• Improving rule of law, human rights, and constitutionalism;
• Enhancing national value, principles, and ethics;
• Strengthening governance and anti-corruption systems;
• Fast-tracking implementation of the Decentralization Policy.

Progress:

• Public Private Partnerships developed.

Challenges:

• Forthcoming

SDG Priorities:

• Fostering partnerships to achieve sustainable development priorities and business benefits;
• Fostering multi-stakeholder collaboration (government, civil society, UN system, etc.).