DECENTRALISATION WILL TAKE RESOURCES FROM “A CLIQUE” OF BENEFICIARIES TO ALL ZAMBIANS ACROSS THE COUNTRY
By Alexander Nkosi
When you critically look at the Constituency Development Fund, you will realise that it is all about empowerment. It has three components:
1) K792 million for secondary school and skills development bursaries. If you are a widow who depends on subsistence farming and the little you raise is all spent on taking your child to a boarding school, you are assured of saving K3600 once your child gets on bursaries. This K3600 can be reinvested into expanding production. This is some form of empowering.
2) K803 million is meant for youth and women empowerment. This will ensure equitable distribution of empowerment funds. Each ward will receive something unlike centralised funds that ended up only benefiting a few. Youths and women can venture into any profitable entreprise of their choice. One such entreprise is dairy farming. A cooperative with 10 Friesian dairy animals, each producing 20 litres of milk per day at K9 per litre earns K54,000 per month. Profit will depend on the cost of production which can be minimised if they can produce their own feed.
3) K2.4 billion is meant for community projects. CDF will create business opportunities through implementation of community projects. The following local entrepreneurs will benefit from business opportunities created: Hardware traders that sell construction materials, block makers, builders, plumbers, electricians, welders, metal fabricators, carpenters, local wood processors, wood traders, cement, iron etc. Putting money in these communities will boost agriculture and other entreprise activities as direct beneficiaries will either invest directly into agriculture or they will have money to buy produce from farmers. Hence there will be a huge multiplier effect.
How is this different? Previously, it was difficult for a youth in Chiundaponde, Malambo and other remote parts of the country to dream of economic empowerment. Actually most of them didn’t even know about it as it was a preserve of a few. Even implementation of projects under CDF still went to a few privileged contractors. A lot of intelligent boys and girls dropped out of school after passing grade seven because it was just so difficult for them to access sponsorship. What is happening now is that resources are being put into the hands of the people so that they can be at the centre of driving development.
Thank you.