Martin Clemensson, Director, ILO Lusaka; Per Lundell, Head of Development Cooperation, Embassy of Sweden in Lusaka; Hans Hofmeijer, ILO Acting Regional Director for Africa; and George Okech (FAO)

LUSAKA, 29 August 2013 – Sweden today signed a new joint programme agreement with the ILO and UN Joint Programme on Decent Work and Food Security through rural youth entrepreneurship development in Zambia.

Under the agreement, the Swedish contribution of nearly USD 7 million will over a two-year period fund a Joint Programme on Sustainable Livelihoods for Young People through the development of rural micro, small and medium enterprises, aimed at accelerated infrastructure development, economic growth and diversification, promoting rural investment, accelerated poverty reduction and enhanced human development.


The programme will focus on value chains for soy beans, which have been classified by NEPAD as a strategic crop for boosting national food security. The production and processing of soy beans already provides income to tens of thousands of rural households in Zambia, with volumes set to increase as a result of fast growing local, regional and global demand. To fully unlock the employment creation potential along the value chain for soy beans,
however, numerous competitiveness challenges will need to be overcome – including low productivity, a significant decent work deficit and environmentally unsustainable production methods. These development challenges translate into a trigger for a donor supported technical cooperation initiative.

The initiative is part of the broader effort by the Government of Zambia to implement the Comprehensive Accelerated Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) of the African Union at national level, and responds to the call from the Rural Futures Initiative launched by the AU-New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) planning agency for alternative development models that “promote broad-based rural economic development and reduction of poverty and inequality including securing decent jobs and sustainable livelihoods.

The beneficiaries of the programme are selected national-level and sector-level governmental and non-governmental intermediary organizations with a mandate to promote sustainable business in the rural economy of Zambia, Including in particular the Ministry of Agriculture and its executing agencies, national employers' and workers' federations and their respective sectoral associations, and district-based business development support service providers. The programme will benefit young women and men living and working in rural districts of the country where economic activities related to the prioritized agricultural value chain concentrate.

The initiative is part of a broader programme of the ILO, FAO and NEPAD to promote decent work and food security in Southern Africa. This broader programme called “Decent work and food security through rural youth entrepreneurship development” builds on national level programmes of action and links them through a sub-regional component. National-level interventions seek to exploit the distinct competitive advantage of local sector-specific production systems to unlock youth entrepreneurship as an engine of employment creation and to boost food security, while the subregional component emphasizes on the common interests and concerns shared by sector stakeholders across country boundaries in pursuit of their rural economic development agenda. For example, national-level interventions seek to boost production quantities through commercial young farmer development, while the subregional component seeks to deepen cross-border trade and to ensure cross-border industry compliance with minimum labour and environmental standards. For more information on other country-level action programmes and the sub-regional programme component refer to the ILO Decent Work Support Team for Southern and Eastern Africa.