Speech for the Policy Dialogue on Food Security and Nutrition Situation in Zambia Theme: Enhancing the Link between Evidence and Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Tuesday, 8th December 2015 Government Complex, Lusaka, Zambia Honorable Mrs Inonge Wina, Vice President Honorable Greyford Monde, Minister of Fisheries and Livestock, Member of Parliament Ms Robinah Mulenga, Executive Director of the National Food and Nutrition Commission Mr Chance Kabaghe, Executive Director of the Indaba Agriculture Policy Research Institute Senior Staff from IAPRI and IFPRI Representative of the Media Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear friends, It is an honour and a privilege for me to participate in today's Policy Dialogue on Food Security and Nutrition Situation in Zambia. This policy dialogue is important and timely. We all know that Zambia has one of the highest rates of undernourishment in Sub-Saharan Africa, reaching 48% of the population. In its 2015 report, the FAO mentions that in absolute figures, the number of undernourished people has more than doubled in the last 20 years, to 7.4 million. 1 Stunting affects nearly 40% of children under 5 (WHO s critical threshold). Not surprisingly, malnutrition rates are higher among poor and rural children. Anaemia is widespread, affecting some 53% of children under 5 years of age and 30% of women of child-bearing age. 1 FAO, 2015. State of Food Insecurity in the World.
Micronutrient deficiencies remain high too. The recently published Global Hunger Index ranks Zambia third from the bottom of 104 countries for which data was available, and if we remove countries not affected by conflict from the list Zambia is at the bottom. We believe this situation should change. We believe it can be changed. The European Union has made food and nutrition security one of the objectives under the new cooperation strategy with Zambia for the period from 2014 to 2020. The European Union has agreed with the Government of Zambia to assist with the fight against under-nutrition and set a target to reduce stunting to 30% by 2018. Ladies and gentlemen, Sustainable Agriculture and Food and Nutrition Security are key priorities of the European Union s development cooperation agenda. We believe substantial reduction in poverty and malnutrition worldwide will only be achieved once livelihoods have improved in rural areas, where small scale farmers form the core of the economy while often being the poorest of the poor. In the period up to 2020, the European Union will provide nearly 9 billion in more than 60 countries to support climate smart agriculture development and food and nutrition security. This is in line with another strong commitment that the EU made a few years ago to support partner countries in reducing the number of stunted children under the age of 5 years by 7 million by 2025. To achieve such a target, the EU has pledged to mobilize 3.5 billion between 2014 and 2020. The European Union is also a strong supporter of the recently adopted 2030 sustainable development agenda and will make every possible effort to contribute to its implementation.
In Zambia the European Union has been supporting the agricultural sector since 2006. We have done so through various initiatives. These include capacity development for the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (now two ministries: Ministry of Agriculture; Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock), and the rolling out of conservation and climate smart agriculture. We will continue to support agriculture under the 11 th European Development Fund with an overall financial allocation of 110 million over the period 2014-2020. Our support to the sector will focus on efficient and effective public - private partnerships to facilitate farmers' access to quality inputs and services as well as to domestic, regional and international markets in various value chains. We will also support agricultural diversification towards improved food and nutrition security. To diversify the agricultural sector and to improve its performance and competitiveness, the right policies must be in place. This is well recognised by Zambia's sector policy framework but it has yet to be fully translated into implementation. The European Union is therefore prepared to support the development of the enabling environment required for Zambia's agriculture to turn into the driver of economic growth and poverty reduction it has the potential to be. For this to happen and for the right policies to be developed in support of adequate and effective policy responses to development challenges and contextual crisis, there is a need for quality, evidence-based information. Ladies and gentlemen, We are well aware of the potential of agriculture to address undernutrition through nutritionsensitive interventions. We are determined to adequately address undernutrition within our agricultural support portfolio. But the fight to under-nutrition involves also other sectors: Health, Education, to name a few.
To address nutrition in the health sector, the European Union has started supporting nutritionfocused interventions through the 50 million "Millennium Development Goals Initiative for Zambia". This programme contributes, inter alia, to strengthening nutrition service delivery at health facility and community level, and creating demand for good quality services of maternal, neonatal, child health and nutrition services in 11 targeted districts. Finally, the European Union is about to launch two calls for proposals in support of the Government's efforts to reduce the country's high stunting prevalence. The first one, under the Thematic Programme "Civil Society and Local Authorities", will support the scaling up of a multi-sectoral approach cutting across health, agriculture and water and sanitation in selected provinces and districts in Zambia for a total budget of 4 million. The second one will focus on "Inclusive and Sustainable Value Chains and Food Fortification" "to improve food security for the poor and vulnerable and to reduce poverty and under-nutrition" in 61 countries, including Zambia for a total budget of 57 million. Strengthening the country's knowledge base of multi-sectoral responses to under-nutrition for evidence based policy advocacy on nutrition will be an important element of these calls. In the same spirit, and in recognition of the need to address a critical shortage of easily accessible quality data on food and nutrition security, the EU has provided the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) with 5.8 million over a six year period (2010-2016) to establish the global Food Security portal. This Food Security portal can be accessed online (at http://www.foodsecurityportal.org). The portal aims to improve food security of the world's poor and to increase resilience of global food systems to food and financial crises. The portal pools information ensuring data quality, timeliness and relevance, and provides opportunities for collaboration among policymakers, professionals and researchers.
In addition, IFPRI has recently launched the South Saharan Africa Food Security Portal 2. The main goal of this regional portal is to ensure that decision making in food security-relevant policy processes at national and regional level in South Saharan Africa is more effective as a result of strengthened policy research and improved analysis capacity. This is being promoted through in-country networks that have been established in six countries 3 to promote interactive food security policy dialogues. Zambia is one of the six countries in the network. Today's event is part of this process. It is the second policy dialogue organised in Zambia and it will be followed by another one in Tanzania in a couple of days. Given the participation of IFPRI, a globally recognised research institute, and its collaboration, among others, with the Indaba Agriculture Policy Research Institute (IAPRI) that has been driving Zambia's policy debate for the past decade, I am confident of the quality and interest of today's discussions and I am proud, as a representative of the European Union in Zambia, to be supporting this valuable and important initiative. I wish you vibrant and enlightening debates. 2 http://ssa.foodsecurityportal.org/regional-sub-portal/sub-saharan-africa 3 The other 5 countries are Senegal, Burkina-Faso, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Tanzania.