Mar 11, 2021
Strengthening Climate Resilience in the Kafue sub-Basin is a project started by CIF and the African Development Bank in 2013. Earlier this year, it received 7,000 votes to win the prestigious Water Changemakers People’s Choice Award (Africa) at the Climate Adaptation Summit. This short interview about the project, and a parallel project in Zambia's Barotse sub-Basin, is a companion to CIF's Climate Solutions podcast:
What is the problem we tried to overcome?
Zambia is a Sub-Saharan African country of 17 million people expected to grow to 22 million by 2030. Despite good economic growth over the past years the country still has half of the population living below the poverty line. Agriculture is the backbone of rural livelihoods with 70 percent of the population depending on it.
This dependence of Zambia’s economy on climate sensitive sectors such as agriculture and natural resources contributes to its significant vulnerability to climate change. The country suffers from frequent droughts, floods, extreme temperatures and dry spells - and their frequency increases as our climate changes. Droughts in the 2018-19 farming season left 2.3 million people in need of emergency food assistance.
Our climate resilience program is investing in two areas of the country – the two sub-basins of Barotse and Kafue. Together these two sub-basins cover 28 districts (1/4 total) and a population of around 4.9 million (30% total), are situated in the breadbasket of the nation but also the most vulnerable region to climate change because of El Nino which causes frequent droughts.
The rural communities in Zambia’s Kafue sub-Basin had clearly flagged during our project consultations that droughts were leaving them with no water for half of the year. This meant that mostly women and children had to trek long distances to access non-local sources. These communities needed support finding find alternative sources of water for agriculture and livestock, along with offering solutions that could help farmers diversify to other cash crops and climate resilient livestock to mitigate some of the risk of possible future crop failures.
How did we overcome this challenge?
In 2013 CIF started investing in this region with two projects, for a combined funding of US$74 million. First, we wanted to create a solid knowledge base in Zambia in relation to climate challenges, threats and responses. So we invested in institutional capacity and mainstream climate resilience in planning and budgeting efforts at national and subnational levels.
We also financed critical infrastructure such as 240km of critical farm-to-market access roads and 350km of priority canals.These roads were designed to withstand floods and therefore boost farmers' income by linking them to markets. Every step of the way, we worked with communities to empower them to continue this work after our project ended.
Second, we addressed the country’s critical problem of vulnerability to extreme weather events.
We financed water points powered by solar energy. These are used for horticulture irrigation, agro-forestry, livestock, fish farming, as well as for household drinking and sanitation. This has facilitated the communities’ change of mindset from over-dependency on rain-fed monoculture-type of agriculture (growing mainly maize as staple food) and enabled diversity towards horticulture and growing of other cash crops outside the rainy season.
The farmers are now able to have enough food for their own household use, as well as sell the excess. Crop areas affected by droughts during extreme climate events in the pilot district have reduced by 76% (MTR Report, 2018).
Overall, the program has been a success, transforming lives and livelihoods. The projects have reduced poverty and enhanced food security for nearly two million people living in the region.
How can these solutions be applied more widely?
We are proud of this result and we are convinced the program has so much more potential. Most sub-Saharan African countries are facing a similar challenge to Zambia in terms of managing the interconnected crises of climate change which is expected to potentially push 130 million more people below the poverty line by 2030, and the COVID-19 pandemic which threatened to drive up to 40 million people into extreme poverty in Africa last year, erasing at least five years of progress in fighting poverty.
In the face of these crises, climate adaptation initiatives driven by local actors, who have the experience and knowledge to inform tailored solutions, are central to being able to prepare, adapt and transform Africa’s most vulnerable societies, economies and ecosystems. Armed with the lessons learned from projects like this one in Zambia we are ready and eager to scale this innovative model even further.
You can read more about the projects here:
- African Development Bank-CIF climate resilient project in Zambia wins Water ChangeMaker Award
- CIF Project: Strengthening Climate Resilience in the Kafue Sub-Basin
This article is part of CIF's Climate Solutions podcast series . In each episode, Mafalda Duarte speaks about about how the lessons and solutions learned from one of CIF's projects can be applied to global efforts to confront climate change.
