In February 2024, President Hakainde Hichilema declared a state of food emergency, noting that the country had experienced a five-week dry spell at a critical time for farmers. The drought impacted 84 of Zambia's 116 districts, affecting over a million farming households. Oxfam International warned that over six million people from farming communities in Zambia were facing acute food shortages and malnutrition due to a severe drought, worsened by climate change and El Niño effects. This drought had led to massive crop failures, affecting nearly half of the nation's planted area.

Meanwhile, climate change scenarios for the region by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicate that the devastating droughts experienced in 2024 will become more frequent. It follows therefore for a heightened effort to create an enabling environment for Zambian farmers to put in place adaptation strategies, such as crop diversification, to enhance the resilience of Zambian agriculture. 

In this context, WFD supported the Zambia Parliamentary Caucus on Post-Legislative Scrutiny (PLS) of the National Assembly to conduct scrutiny on the Food Reserve Act (FRA) of 2020, to assess whether the design of the law as fit for purpose and whether its implementation had been adequate, in order to take fact-based remedial action.

The PLS report identified, among other things, weaknesses in the Government's promotion of crop diversification as part of the national approach to climate change adaptation and put forward a series of specific and general recommendations. The timing of the report, as the Government of Zambia prepared their second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, due for submission to the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by February 2025, allowed for its adaptation-related recommendations to inform the section on national climate change adaptation measures foreseen for the period 2025 to 2030, and the subsequent implementation thereof.

The Zambian Minister and the Permanent Secretary of Agriculture received a delegation of MPs led by the Chair of the new PLS Caucus, who presented the report to the Executive and gave a detailed account of each of the recommendations.

Recommendation 21.2 

The Statutory Instrument (SI) of the FRA should recognise the different farming periods in year i.e., rainfed, irrigated and winter crops. Regulating commodity designations based on agroecological zones in the different regions of Zambia would incentivise farmers to adapt to climate change by promoting agricultural diversity and reducing overreliance on water-intensive crops more effectively, particularly in drought-prone areas.

General Recommendation 4 

Enhancing support for farmers and improving transparency in communication are vital. Providing capacity-building programs for cooperatives and farmers on effective storage techniques and crop diversification would improve food security (...).

General Recommendation 5 

Encouraging organic farming practices and crop diversification would unlock climate change mitigation and adaptation benefits respectively;

General Recommendation 6 

The findings of this study are considered as part of a wider consultation on the Government of Zambia’s second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, due for submission to the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by February 2025. Zambia’s first NDC (updated in 2021) had committed to a programme on adaptation of strategic productive systems (agriculture, wildlife, water) through diversification and promotion of Climate Smart Agricultural practices. The information analysed in this PLS should inform that parliamentary process of oversight into the suitability of the second NDC, particularly its agriculture adaptation programs which this study shows are needed.