UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Deputy Administrator Isobel Coleman at the Feed the Future Accelerator Launch in Zambia

Lusaka, Zambia

DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR ISOBEL COLEMAN: Good morning, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be with you today. Thank you Minister of Agriculture [Reuben] Phiri, Director [Gabriel] Pollen of the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit, and Chargé d’Affaires [Linnisa] Wahid for bringing us together.

I just toured the Export Trading Group’s fertilizer blending facility, where I saw in action our partnership with Zambian producers to deliver fertilizer to thousands of Zambian farmers.

I also had a chance to speak with dedicated industry leaders who described their efforts to increase Zambia’s agricultural productivity.

This is an anxious and difficult time for many Zambians. The country is currently facing a devastating drought – its driest agricultural season in more than forty years. Brought on by the effects of El Niño, the drought has resulted in farmers losing as much as 60 to 95 percent of their crops across large swathes of the country, causing maize prices to spike.

More than six and a half million people – over a third of this country – are in need of humanitarian assistance, with over a million and half people likely experiencing acute food insecurity.

This is far from a unique challenge for Zambia. Across the African continent, farmers are grappling every day with the accelerating impacts of climate change on food security – from increasing drought, to rising temperatures to worsening floods, pests and pathogens.

Food security and climate change are inextricably linked. And yet, despite this year’s setback, Zambian agriculture is still poised for significant growth.

The United States is committed to supporting the Zambian people in getting through the immediate crisis of this devastating drought, and then building toward a more resilient and prosperous future. We believe that if Zambia is able to realize the full potential of its agricultural sector, it will not only easily meet the food needs of its own people, but could become the center of a regional breadbasket that helps feed the world.

Our new Global Food Security Strategy, written in partnership between the U.S. government and the Zambian government, will guide our joint efforts to fight hunger and build resilience in Zambia over the next five years, focusing on investments in technologies such as drought-tolerant seeds, improved water management practices, and advanced weather forecasting.

These global best practices will expand market-led solutions to strengthen food systems and drive agricultural growth, putting financial, digital, and productive tools into the hands of Zambian entrepreneurs.

Already, we are working together to execute this strategy. Today, I am pleased to announce that the United States, through USAID, intends to provide $67 million to Zambia to address the current drought, strengthen long term food security, and build resilience in the country across a variety of sectors.

First, we must respond to the most pressing needs caused by this crippling drought. We are committing $20 million of this assistance to immediate drought response, which will go directly toward the most urgent needs – including getting life-saving food, cash, and agricultural assistance to the drought-affected communities who need it most.

A further $14.5 million will go toward accelerating Zambia’s long-term recovery from the drought. These investments will promote sustainable agricultural production and market access, support businesses and entrepreneurs, and build the resilience of households, communities and the broader food system.

Connecting smallholder farmers and small and medium sized agribusinesses to markets is a core focus of USAID’s food security work. For example, through a combination of technical assistance and access to finance, USAID supported Nature’s Nectar, an environmentally conscious honey processor and exporter in Zambia that sources raw honey from rural smallholders.

Over two years, the company distributed 12,000 beehives to 1,200 smallholders and exported 90,000 kilograms of honey, generating new sources of income for its network of smallholder farmers. Our investments will also go toward sectors that will help build Zambia’s resilience to shocks over the long term – including water, sanitation, and hygiene.

Already, over the past five years, we’ve worked to repair or construct more than 1,000 wells in Zambia, helping over 300,000 people access clean and safe water. These resources will allow us to build on that important progress.

They will also support Zambian leaders’ efforts to support a policy environment that fuels job and income-generating businesses, trade, and investment. Acknowledging the role that good governance plays in a resilient society, USAID will support public financial management reform priorities and domestic revenue mobilization that position Zambia to thrive.

Even as we seek to address this historic drought with immediate assistance, we are also looking toward a future in which Zambian farmers can grow more, sell more, and earn more, increasing the availability of food in their own communities, and becoming agricultural suppliers on a global scale.

For over a decade, Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global food security initiative, has been a champion in the fight against hunger, poverty, and malnutrition, working to build sustainable and resilient food systems. Fundamentally, we know that the best way to fight hunger and poverty is to invest in agricultural-led economic growth – agricultural growth is four times more effective at eliminating poverty than growth in other sectors.

In areas where Feed the Future has worked, studies show that poverty, hunger, and child stunting declines outpaced results seen in non-Feed the Future peer countries. For example, in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Tanzania, the prevalence of poverty in Feed the Future programming areas declined by an average of 25 percent between 2010 and 2019, compared to a 3 percent average decline in these country’s national poverty rates during this same period.

Because Zambia’s agricultural sector has demonstrated extraordinary potential for growth and improved productivity, Feed the Future is stepping up its investments here.

Today, I am pleased to announce that we’ve selected Zambia as one of our initial launch countries for Feed the Future Accelerator, an initiative to deepen our partnership with select African countries to strengthen food security, increase agricultural productivity, and fight hunger, poverty, and malnutrition.

Working with Congress, USAID plans to invest additional funding to increase the long-term food security of Zambia – resources that will help increase the productivity of its smallholder farmers, strengthen the development of agricultural small-and-medium enterprises, boost incomes, improve nutrition, and weather future shocks.

The Accelerator effort in Zambia will be an integral part of the Lobito Corridor, the continent’s first Trans-African railroad and the flagship development of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, or PGI. When complete, the Lobito Corridor will connect the economies of Angola, DRC, and Zambia through sustainable infrastructure and trade.

Our ambition is that this economic corridor, enhanced by our investments in the Accelerator initiative, will raise incomes among small-and medium sized farm holders, especially women farmers, while also contributing to regional trade and market linkages – catalyzing the kind of agricultural growth needed to enable countries not just to provide for their own people, but to become food exporters.

Our Accelerator initiative will seek to mobilize private sector investment and to showcase the unique business opportunities in Africa. Zambia, with its committed government, dynamic private sector, and high potential for agriculture-led growth, will be at the forefront of this effort.

Finally, as part of Accelerator, we will work with donor countries to build on each other’s efforts, to foster greater collaboration as we work toward the same goals.

In recent years, we’ve demonstrated this type of collaboration with Ireland, which brings a wealth of knowledge on nutrition and healthy diets and shares our objective of elevating gender in our food security work. Learning from each other’s experiences and collaborating here in Zambia will strengthen our efforts. Greater success will come through closer collaboration – among donor countries, NGOs, the private sector, farmers, producers, and governments.

And of course, it is the Zambian people who will lead Zambia’s agricultural transformation. With the connectivity offered by Feed the Future’s Accelerator initiative and the PGI-backed Lobito Corridor, we can bring millions of rural farming families into an increasingly commercial agriculture sector.

Accelerator will aim to equip fertilizer producers such as the Export Trading Group, rural agro dealers like Justine Tembo, who you heard from earlier, and food processors such as 260 Brands and Luano Honey, to support farmers with the resources they need to grow more sustainable and productive crops and to meet the demands of the domestic, regional, and even global market.

At this time of great need and great potential, the United States is committed to standing with Zambia to meet the challenges of the moment and unleash the promise of a brighter future marked by agricultural productivity, climate resilience, and economic growth.

We look forward to deepening our partnership, and continuing to invest in the Zambian people, their prosperity, and their potential.

Thank you.