#Her Zambia Scheme

Considering the Government’s intention to provide women with opportunities and access to sustaining livelihood and beating poverty, agriculture presents an exciting angle to capacity building. Horizon one focuses on building successful smallholder farms. This is the core of the whole scheme and will enable the beneficiary to sustain her daily life through regular income generation by making the most of her existing skill set. Horizon two looks at embracing the emerging opportunity to develop community wealth by grouping small holder farmers in a cooperative model to access economies of scale while maintaining an operation within their capacity. Horizon three aims to nurture growth to uplift the entire region by developing regional food systems which will generate economic opportunities for the whole community.

Developed for women ages 18 - 55 from low-income, rural homes in Zambia.

At the heart of Zambia’s challenge to reduce poverty through economic growth seems to be the low productivity of agriculture for the majority of poor, farming Zambians – but it may also present an opportunity. Eighty percent of Zambia’s poor work in agriculture where value added per worker has remained flat since 2000. Women are the most affected by this.

Over 3 phases the scheme will work to co-develop regional food systems with its beneficiaries. Phase one will help establish profitable small holder farming operations. Phase two will establish multi stakeholder cooperatives with the beneficiaries including the government as an active member in the model. Phase three will expand to accomodating a regional food system. The service design of the scheme has been developed to capitalize on the existing behaviors, skillsets and mindsets of the target beneficiaries.