Development of District Agriculture Plans (DAPs) and its implementation

Zambia remains one of the countries most affected by food insecurity, poverty and climate vulnerability in Southern Africa. With over 60% of the population living below the poverty line, and 41% in extreme poverty, the rural population particularly women smallholder farmers face deep structural barriers to socio-economic inclusion. This is further compounded by the effects of climate change, unsustainable farming practices, and gender-based disparities in access to land, inputs, extension services and markets. Agricultural practices remain largely rain-fed, dominated by monoculture maize production and outdated subsidy schemes, further contributing to soil degradation, low productivity, and poor dietary diversity. To address these issues, the Government of Zambia has launched the Comprehensive Agriculture Transformation Support Programme (CATSP) under the 8th National Development Plan (8NDP), focusing on climate resilience, diversification, and inclusive rural development. However, the operationalisation of these reforms is hampered by weak institutional capacity and limited implementation tools at local level. At sub-national level, there is a shortage of resources as well as basic and specific know-how in public administrations for the operationalisation of strategies and innovation-led technical advice. There is no institutionalisation of vertical knowledge transfer and horizontal exchange of experience in multi-stakeholder formats. There is a great need to strengthen process and technical expertise. The project aims to advice key actors and decision makers as well as technical experts from agricultural authorities at national and sub-national level, who are involved in the formulation and implementation of policies, strategies, programmes and action plans to better implement evidence-based inclusive measures with regard to climate resilience, food security and business development. The project"s intermediaries are agricultural extension advisors from governmental and non-governmental service providers, including private sector, who are trained in innovation-led and evidence-based approaches to climate-adapted, nutrition-sensitive and gender-responsive agriculture for them to then train the target group. The target group is the rural population in three intervention regions (Luapula, Southern and Eastern Province), with a focus on smallholder farmers, who mainly produce food for home-consumption and sell any surplus harvest. Output 1 of the CREATE project aims to strengthen human and institutional capacities in agricultural administrations at national and sub-national level for evidence-based policy-making processes. The results hypothesis is that improved knowledge on the part of managers and technical focal persons and the ongoing introduction of scalable implementation experiences and solutions (output 2) into participatory policy-making formats will strengthen the evidence-based design of inclusive agricultural programmes, as well as their operationalisation and implementation with regards to climate resilience, food security and business development. Where possible, policy-making formats are designed to be gen-der-responsive and local best practices on empowerment aspects and changing gender roles in agriculture are presented by subnational representatives at the political level. Output 2 aims to improve the dissemination of location-sensitive solutions for climate resilience and food security in agriculture in the three intervention areas. Smallholder farmers are more likely to invest in long-term measures for climate adaptation, food security and business development if these represent locally tried-and-tested solutions and innovations. These solutions should include gender aspects and integrate Gender Transformative Action (GTA) in agriculture in the training modules (ToT) of the participants (multipliers - selected public, private (MSMEs, lead firms), co-operative advisors and lead farmers).