ZAMBIA: Renewed focus needed to meet MDGs

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

LUSAKA, 16 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - Zambia is on track to meet many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but is still experiencing serious challenges in the areas of food security and health.

According to the 'Zambia MDG Status Report for 2005', it was unlikely that the country would attain three of the 10 MDGs by 2015 - halving the number of people suffering from hunger; reducing maternal mortality by three quarters; and integrating principles of sustainable development into its policies and programmes.

The report said Zambia would not reduce the number of people facing hunger by the required 50 percent because it still had structural problems in addressing food security, such as high poverty levels and poor agricultural productivity.

Other challenges included improving market access to encourage farmers to produce more crops, and intensifying efforts to mitigate the impact of droughts and floods. The country also needed to respond more efficiently to food crises, eliminate deficiencies in its early warning systems and keep adequate food reserves.

Factors hampering the achievement of reduced maternal mortality included a high percentage of home births, limited access to healthcare facilities, poor quality of care by untrained hospital staff and a lack of surgical and medical supplies. HIV/AIDS, below-standard post-natal care, prenatal complications and difficult deliveries also contributed to maternal mortality.

On the positive side, the Zambia MDG status report noted that progress had been made in combating HIV/AIDS, and reversing its spread could begin; gains had been made in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women; and the country was on track to meet the MDG for universal primary education.

Zambia also had the potential to cut by 50 percent the number of people living in extreme poverty, reduce child mortality by two-thirds, stop malaria and other major diseases, and halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

Finance and National Planning deputy minister Felix Mutati said the state would focus on enhancing its capacity to implement poverty reduction programmes in line with the MDGs, and tighten fiscal discipline to ensure that allocated public funds were properly used in implementing programmes.

He said the government had done everything it could to change the picture presented in the country's 2003 MDG report, which indicated that Zambia was unable to achieve most of the goals.

The United Nations Development Programme Country Representative, Aneas Chuma, said meeting the MDGs was not solely the government's responsibility.

Chuma suggested that the 2005 report be used as an advocacy tool for mobilising investment, and to encourage policymakers to create an enabling environment for attaining the MDGs.

Though Zambia has not suffered a war, its social statistics were as bad as countries that have been ravaged by protracted conflict.

University of Zambia (UNZA) Development Studies lecturer Francis Chigunta attributed Zambia's poor level of development to problems with the allocation of resources.

"The social crisis in Zambia is terrible. My opinion is that there is lack of prioritisation of key problems or needy areas ... we always seem to have our programmes upside down: poor targeting of people who need to be assisted, resource misallocation and wastage ... resulting in little reaching the intended targets," Chigunta commented.

"As a result, the social indicators in Zambia continue to get worse," he added.

Chigunta said macroeconomic growth was not trickling down to the people, because growth was taking place in industries and sectors that were not labour intensive.

"These are capital-intensive industries - this is particularly the case in the copper mining sector; secondly, there is little investable capital from the retail and other sectors where there is a dominance of South African firms," he observed.

"Remember, in Zambia there is 100 percent profit repatriation - in a country with a shortage of capital, it means the little that is there flows out to South Africa. As a result, there is little to invest in productive ventures in Zambia; the result is little value addition and a lack of demand for labour," Chigunta explained.

With regard to job opportunities in the mining sector, he said, "The issue is: what kind of jobs are they creating? What is the qualiy of the jobs? How much do people get? Is it enough to lift them out of poverty?"

Debt writeoffs have had little impact on the country's development. "It is not like Zambia is getting new donor inflows of funds. What it means is that Zambia will now not be required to borrow more to pay off the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and other lenders, but in Zambia there is already a shortage of funds," Chigunta pointed out.

"Half of our budget is underwritten by donors, so what savings are we talking about? Everything will be dependent on how we optimally utilise what we already have," he said.

While Zambia would not be required to service debt that had been written off, conditionalities still applied.

"Recently, Dr. Musokotwane [Secretary to the Treasury] was quoted in the press as saying that the conditionalities may outweigh the benefits of debt forgiveness. Also, remember that some countries ... are campaigning against unilateral debt forgiveness, as this would deprive them of influence over economic policy in poor countries," he commented.

"In whose interest do these countries want to influence economic policy in poor Zambia? Also, what is the nature of the conditionalities for debt forgiveness?" Such conditionalities might be useful to some extent, Chigunta noted, but countries like Zambia must retain ownership of their policy processes.

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