The African sun beats down on the fields of Kafue – a town in Zambia’s Lusaka Province – where Grace Nyirongo Phiri walks between rows of lush, green crops that are just sprouting. A gentle hum is the only sound as water flows through a network of tubes, delivering life directly to the roots of each plant.
Just a few years ago, this same scene was one of exhaustion and uncertainty. “Watering with hose pipes would take the whole day,” Phiri recalls, the memory still fresh in her mind. “You could be watering up to midnight. The crops were not receiving enough water… they were not uniform.”
Hundreds of kilometers away, in a bright, air-conditioned lecture theatre at the University of Zambia (UNZA), Kangwa Bwalya listens intently. With her in the hall are 350 of her fellow civil engineering students, a far cry from the cramped, century-old rooms that once defined the campus. In Kabwe, in the country’s Central District, Joseph Banda unlocks the door to his agribusiness shop, a tangible dream built from the confidence to create it.
These three Zambians — farmer, student, and entrepreneur –have never met. Yet, their stories are linked by a common thread: a transformative intervention by the African Development Fund–the concessional financing window of the African Development Bank Group. The Fund is sowing seeds of growth, knowledge, and opportunity across the country.
From Scarcity to Abundance: A Farmer’s Revolution
For Grace Nyirongo Phiri, the challenge was significant: lack of water. Her small-scale farm was at the mercy of an inefficient and back-breaking irrigation system. Farm yields were inconsistent, the income unreliable, and the future looked as parched as the fields under the midday sun.
“But fortunately, enough,” she says, smiling, “this loan came around to help farmers from the Sustainable Agriculture Finance Facility pioneered by African Development Fund through the Zambia Emergency Food Production Project.”
With ADF support, Phiri received more than a loan; she gained access to a revolution, a transition that included shifting from hose pipes to a sophisticated drip irrigation system, sinking a new borehole, and installation of a solar pump. The impact was immediate and profound.
“I’ve graduated from using hose pipes to using a drip,” she states with pride. “You minimize the usage of water. And then you have uniformity of irrigation in the field, so your crop comes out well because it’s uniformly watered, and the yield is also okay. And then now we have time to do other things because you just switch on the pumps, [and] your food is being irrigated.”
This transformation is supported by a network extending from her fields to the national soils testing laboratory. Extension officers, now equipped with motorbikes and electronic tablets provided by ADF under the project, reliably reach farmers like Grace.
“Then, we had no motorbikes, and it was difficult for us to go in the field to get the information,” explains Chilanda Boldwin, an agricultural extension officer. “But since we have motorbikes now, we can get the information needed to the farmers.”
The data collected drives a scientific approach to agriculture. At the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute (ZARI), Head of soil chemistry laboratory, Brian Gondwe is part of a team empowered to diagnose soil health with new, state-of-the-art equipment.
“The African Development Fund give us funds to train our extension officers on how to sample… and to procure up-to-date equipment which can reduce the turnaround to produce results,” Gondwe explains. “Since this project is helping us to generate results from soils from the farmers, we know what deficiencies these soils have.”
This knowledge creates a direct pipeline for customized solutions. The soil analysis from ZARI informs the precise fertilizer blends produced at the revitalized Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia (NCZ). For over four decades, NCZ relied on outdated equipment and a one-size-fits-all fertilizer formula.
“You cannot have the same soil composition in all these places,” explains the NCZ CEO. “Therefore, using the standard formulation may not work for all the farmers.”
With a new blending plant and a critical grant of $1.2 million from the African Development Fund for initial raw materials, NCZ is now poised to revolutionise the market. “The support from the African Development Fund has come just at the right time,” the CEO emphasizes. “We will be able to make custom-made fertilizer for the various soil types… and crop-specific blends. This will push forward the agricultural sector in Zambia.”
For Phiri, the farmer, this entire ecosystem of support translates into a future she once only dreamed of. “We are being elevated slowly by slowly from small-scale farmers. One day to be maybe a medium-scale farmer, after a commercial farmer, who knows? God knows. But this help is so much. We are so grateful.”
Phiri is among more than 25,000 beneficiaries of the Government’s Zambia Emergency Food Production Facility (ZEFPF) financed from an ADF loan of $14.3 million loan. ZEFPF is part of the African Emergency Food Production Framework approved by the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group on 15 July 2022. The project has bolstered resilient farming livelihoods and increase food and nutrition security following outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The project has also deployed a digital risk sharing platform to leverage loan financing for small and medium scale farmers from five commercial banks through the Sustainable Agriculture Finance Facility run by the government of Zambia. The guarantee fund has grown from a modest seed fund of $5.6 million in 2023 with government scaling it up to over $30 million in 2025. Loan amounts vary from $2,000 to $20,000 depending on borrower capacity. Derisking is further enhanced through insurance, farmer registration, cooperative mobilization, strengthening extensions systems and market linkages.
The project has distributed over 300 motorbikes and electronic tablets to field extension staff. SAFF has engaged over 1,700 agro-dealers registered on the ZIAMIS platform and are servicing loan beneficiaries to redeem farm inputs. Each agro dealer recruits 3-4 employees.
The project has provided a capital injection of $1.25million to enable NCZ to procure raw materials to operationalise its new 288,000 metric tonne (mt) fertilizer blending. This will contribute to Zambia attaining self-sufficiency in fertilizer production.
The project has provided a capital injection of about $180,000 to operationalise the 30mt/day Chitambo Cassava Milling Plant and process raw cassava into flour, starch and stock feeds. The plant will buy raw cassava from about 4000 cassava growers.
In 2022, Zambia’s total fertilizer imports were 632,529mt and Zambia faced challenges related to poor timing of imports, which typically occurred during the planting season. The support to NCZ has contributed to Zambia attaining self-sufficiency in local fertilizer production, and reduction on import reliance. The increased local supply is also expected to cut local fertilizer prices by over 40%.
In 2023, Zambia imported $33.73 million of goods from Russia, primarily fertilizers ($30 million). Imports from Ukraine totaled $278.57 million, with oil seeds, grains, cereals, flour, starch, and seeds accounting for over 30%. Thanks to contributions from ZEFPF, Zambia produced over 3.7 million metric tonnes in 2024/25–a surplus of 1.2 million metric tonnes above its national consumption level of 2.5 million
From Theory to Practice: Building the Engineers of Tomorrow
If Phiri’s story is one of tangible, earthly transformation, then Kangwa Bwalya’s is one of intellectual and professional awakening. As a final-year civil and environmental engineering student at UNZA, she represents the new face of Zambian expertise.
Her journey was almost derailed before it began, not due to a lack of will, but rather a lack of infrastructure. “Previously, the biggest structure we had in our school had a seating capacity for about 100 students,” says Dr. Charles Kahanji, Head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. “But over the years with the demand for engineering programs, we’ve seen that there’s been so much interest.”
The African Development Bank Group’s support transformed this reality. The project constructed two new state-of-the-art lecture theatres, each seating 350 students, and transformed the university’s laboratories.
For Bwalya, the new labs were a revelation. “Previously when we would go into the labs, you would find the equipment isn’t working,” she recalls. “Going into the SSTEP-transformed labs was very exciting for me because I got to see modern equipment, new equipment that does a lot.”
Kahanji adds: “We look at the equipment that we had, most of it was obsolete or quite old and most of it was manual. But right now, the equipment that we have, a number of them, are digital. We’re able to extract the data that we want in real-time… It has been a game changer.”
This bridge between theory and practice is crucial. “We got to bridge the gap between our theory and our real-life engineering because then we get to know how to do the labs which are also done out there,” Kangwa explains.
The impact extends beyond the students to the lecturers themselves. Dr. Sam Kangwa, a mining engineering lecturer, was a direct beneficiary of the project’s PhD scholarships. “Before I had my PhD, I was not even allowed to teach postgraduate programs because I was not qualified,” he says. “The impact is huge. The impact, you can feel it that now you have reached a certain standard where you can actively perform in all activity concerning academic issues.”
This elevation of the entire institution is creating a virtuous cycle. Kangwa Bwalya, inspired by the sanitation issues she saw in her own community, now sees a clear path to solving them. “Five years from now I picture myself as a qualified engineer back in my community solving some of the issues that they are having… and impacting other people’s lives as well, helping them gain or be able to achieve the dreams that they have. Just like I was given an opportunity.”
From Graduate to Employer: The Ripple Effect of Skills
While Bwalya looks to the future, Joseph Banda is living proof of what targeted investment in skills can achieve today. A graduate of a trade training institute, Joseph represents the Technical Education, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training (TEVET) pathway at Lukashya Technical Trade Institute in Kasama, Zambia’s Northern province, a critical engine for self-reliance.
“I started this business in 2020 after I graduated with a certificate in general agriculture with the help of African Development Bank Group,” Banda states, standing in his agribusiness shop, Akunzi AgroVet. “With the knowledge I acquired there, I saw an opportunity, instead of me coming here to start searching for employment.”
He started with small jobs, reinvesting his earnings into farming, and eventually used the profits to launch his agro-shop. The transformation has been profound, moving him from a job seeker to a job creator.
“It has transformed me in a very massive way,” he says. “Because now, myself, I’m a director of a company and I manage to employ at least five direct employees… and we have about 30 people who are working for us indirectly. So, it has helped me, and it has helped the community.”
His success is a testament to perseverance and the practical power of trade skills. “This opportunity is a game changer,” he asserts. “Trade is something which changed life seriously for people, and it has done massively to me because my life has been transformed.”
Banda’s story completes a powerful cycle: the training provided by TEVET institutes fuels entrepreneurship; entrepreneurs then support farmers like Grace with inputs and advice; in turn, farmers’ increased productivity creates demand for better infrastructure, which is designed and built by engineers like Bwalya. As a result, the entire economy grows, creating opportunities for everyone.
Bwalya and Banda are among 250,000+ beneficiaries of the $29.4 million ADF funded Science and Technology Education Project approved in November 2013 and completed in July 2014. It successfully achieved its target of helping increase access to better and more equitable training in science and technology.
The project delivered state-of-the-art education and skills infrastructure and equipment for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. This included construction and/or refurbishing of various facilities including lecture theatres, libraries, ICT centers, laboratories and hostels across the four beneficiary universities and the four Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions.
They are the University of Zambia in Lusaka; the Copperbelt University in Kitwe; Mulungushi University in Kabwe; the Northern Technical College in Ndola; Nkumbi International College in Mkushi; St. Mawaggali Trades Training Institute in Choma; and Lukashya Technical Training Institute in Kasama.
The refurbished laboratories equipped with state-of-the art equipment are being used for quality teaching, research and innovation. They are also used to generate income for the beneficiary institutions, through collaboration with the private sector, a key factor for project sustainability and maintenance of the equipment.
The project directly contributed to the upskilling of 11,470 youth – of which 24.5 percent were female – through scholarships for youth in various artisanal courses (mechanics, welding, electronics, etc.) and work-based/entrepreneurship training for employability and entrepreneurial capabilities. Many of them are entrepreneurs in various industries such as Energy, Electronics, agroprocessing, Welding, etc.
The project also supported institutional improvement to the quality and relevance of training for the current labour market. This included upskilling 85 faculty members – of which 10.6 percent were female – to master’s and PhD levels in Science and Technology; development of 62 gender responsive curricula in collaboration with the private sector (37 at university and 25 at TVET levels respectively).
A Harvest of Hope
The stories of Phiri, Bwalya, and Banda are more than mere individual successes. They represent an investment in infrastructure as well as human capital. As Grace Nyirongo Phiri perfectly encapsulates, looking over her thriving, uniformly watered fields, “This facility is sustainable, unless you misuse it. Because from now I’m sure I will be at a different level.”
The seeds of tomorrow are already taking root in these words and in a new generation of determined Zambian leaders.”
