Eastern Province of Zambia

Eastern Province has a population of 1.833 million inhabitants. 87.8 % live in rural areas, whereas the national average is 58.2 % (Table 7). Population growth is high at 2.6 % (2.2% for rural and 5.9 % for urban Eastern Province). The literacy rate is 54.4 %, and primary school attendance is low: only 44.8 % (Katete) and 49.2 % (Petauke) of the 7 to 13-year-old children are attending primary school (data from 2010; CSO, 2015). Fever and malaria cause 19.2 % of the deaths in Eastern Province (CSO, 2015).

Table 7: Population data of Eastern Province.

Facts about the projects’ districts

Petauke Katete

Population 241,056 160,985

Surface in km² 7,140 2,433

Population density/km² 33.76 66.16

No. of wards 18 18

Source: Population Census Zambia,2010.

The province consists mostly of farmlands, bushlands and forests (ILUA I REPORT, 2008). Agriculture (commercial and subsistence) is the dominant economic sector (Table 8; CSO 2014). Other traditional economic activities in Eastern Province include hunting, the collection of wild fruits and vegetables, and barter trading (Simute et al., 1998).

Table 8: Percentage of households producing a certain crop in 2013/14

Crop production in Eastern Province (compared to nat.)

Maize 95.3 (83.4) %

Cassava 1.7 (22.1) %

Millet 0.3 (4.6) %

Sorghum 0.3 (1.4) %

Rice 1.1 (3.5) %

Mixed beans 4.7 (11.2) %

Soy 11.5 (4.5) %

Sweet potatoes 6.8 (12.8) %

Groundnuts 53.2 (31.3) %

Source: CSO, 2015.

Eastern Province’s plateau has good soil quality and sufficient rainfall for agricultural production. Yet despite its vast groundwater and land resources, agriculture is underdeveloped (Neubert et. al., 2011). This is unfortunate, as agriculture has the potential to increase economic growth and food and nutrition security. The climate in Eastern Province has three main seasons: a rainy season from November to April, a cool dry season from May to August and a hot dry season from September to October (see Figure 1). This results in one harvest of field crops a year and one off-season permitting irrigated horticulture.

The projects districts Katete and Petauke are mainly covered by cropland and low dense forest. The valley region is generally suitable for drought tolerant crops such as sorghum, finger millet and tobacco (Simute et al., 1998).

Maize²⁰ is the main staple in Eastern Province and is produced by 95.3 % of the farmers (Table 8; Central Statistical Office 2015). Net buyers, net sellers and self-sufficient farmers account for 68.7 %, 30.5 % and 0.7 % of agricultural production in Eastern Province, respectively. Chicken is the most common and widespread domesticated animal of rural households (IAPRI, 2015).

20 Maize flour is used to make nshima, a thick porridge eaten with relish. Nshima is the main source of energy in the Zambian diet (Nyirenda et al., 2007).

Figure 1: Climate graph for Chipata, Eastern Province

Source: University of East Anglia, 2017.

Zambia´s nutrition policy environment

Zambia´s Vision 2030 lays out targets for achieving a “well-nourished and healthy population by 2030” (Kumar et al., 2018). Besides being an ‘early riser’ in the SUN movement (see Box 2), the government has adopted international targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the World Health Assembly targets to end malnutrition and the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Program (CAADP) compact to improve Food and Nutrition Security (IIED, 2017).

In 2006, the Government of Zambia passed its first National Food and Nutrition Policy (NFNP), which incorporates disparate policies on breastfeeding and micronutrients (Harris et al., 2017). Until then, Zambia's nutrition policy environment was incoherent and uncoordinated across sectors, and incomplete within the nutrition sector (Harris and Drimie, 2012). The release of the NFNP brought nutrition into the focus of policy- makers and triggered a cascade of strategic plans, program documents, multi-sectoral district plans and guidance notes (Harris et al., 2017).

Health and agriculture as key sectors for nutrition

The 2016 Sixth National Development Plan (SNDP) describes nutrition as essential element for achieving the country’s socio-economic development targets (Kumar

et al., 2018). The agricultural sector seeks to create national food security by producing sufficient amounts of maize and other staple foods. Maize is the staple food in Zambia. Maize production was heavily promoted by the colonial government (Neubert et al., 2011) and, since then, is encouraged by subsidies and uniform prices for inputs and crop producers. Prices for inputs are regulated by the Farmer Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) which was introduced in 2002, and prices for crop producers are regulated by the Food Reserve Agency (FRA), which was set up in 1972 and is based on the colonial idea of maize control boards. FRA buys maize from farmers at guaranteed prices and forms a strategic reserve to modulate national grain prices. These policies resulted in a gradual shift from the consumption of indigenous crops like millet, sorghum and cassava to maize — to the point that today, these indigenous staples are rarely consumed. Diets based on nshima (maize meal porridge) are preferred by most Zambians, providing meals that are high in starch yet generally low in nutrients (IIED, 2017).

The 2016 Second National Agriculture Policy (SNAP) describes the agriculture sector as a key driver of economic growth, and, like the first NAP (2004–2015), puts emphasis on increased production, sector liberalization, and commercialization.

The SNAP explicitly incorporates the twin goals of food diversity and healthy nutrition and defines food diversity as the “cultivation of crops other than maize”.

However, it disregards vegetables and fruits, bio-fortified crops, indigenous crops, nutrition education and the utilization of nutritious foods and yet has to define specific goals (IIED 2017, p. 11).

The Zambian Government increasingly considers nutrition security in its national policies, and its 5^th National Health Strategic Plan (NHSP) seeks to improve the nutrition and food security of the population, particularly of children, adolescents and mothers in childbearing age. However, while the NHSP explicitly refers to the National Food and Nutrition Policy (NFNP), Vision 2030 and the Sixth National Development Plan, there have been few attempts to facilitate coordination between the health and the agricultural sector to address the multidimensional causes of malnutrition.

Food and nutrition governance

The 2006 National Food and Nutrition Policy (NFNP) addressed nutrition through a multi-sectoral approach involving the health and agriculture sectors and included a call for food diversification. Building on this approach, the 2011–2015 National Food and Nutrition Strategic Plan (NFNSP) pushed new multi-sector efforts to strengthen and expand interventions defined in the first Most Critical Days Programme (MCDP I, 2013–15). The MCDP I, which coordinated with the global

SUN movement, identified the promotion of improved child feeding and the diversification of maternal and child diets as priority areas (Kumar et al., 2018). The goal of its successor, the MCDP II, is to significantly reduce stunting among children under two years of age to 25 percent in targeted districts by 2022. This makes the MCDP II fundamental to the NFNSP goal of eliminating all forms of malnutrition across Zambia by 2030 (NFNC, 2018).

Decentralized multi-sector coordination

Zambia has instituted structures in multiple sectors at the national, provincial and district level to coordinate nutrition action. The National Food and Nutrition Commission (NFNC) was established under the auspices of the Ministry of Health to serve as an advisory body on food and nutrition issues (NFNC, 2018). The NFNC is the main driving force behind the MCDP I and II. It has spearheaded efforts to address the underlying causes of malnutrition, largely through coordinated and decentralised action at the national, provincial, district and communal level.

The FANSER project is mainstreaming food and nutrition security through the District Nutrition Coordinating Commission (DNCC) at the district level in Eastern Province. The aim of the DNCC (is to align nutrition interventions of ministries and civil society organisations. The Ward Nutrition Coordination Committees (WNCCs) were established to facilitate coordination at the community level (Concern Worldwide, 2017).