Zambia Business In Development Facility (ZBiDF)
Zambia
CHALLENGE
With support from the Swedish International Development Agency and the Embassy of Sweden in Lusaka, AMSCO was selected as the host organisation for the pilot phase of ZBiDF with a project budget of US$1.5Million. ZBiDF is a multi-stakeholder platform, comprising champions from business, government, donors and civil society in Zambia, that was designed to engage business, facilitate dialogue and innovation, and directly support public private partnership action on key business and development challenges.
SOLUTION
The project’s focus is summarised under four major thematic areas:
- The establishment of an appropriate structure for ZBiDF.
- Support for the development of impactful, cross-sector partnerships.
- The provision of free offerings to develop a partnering conducive environment.
- The development of professional partnership broking and training skills.
IMPACTS
- Support to the National Skills Development Programme under the Industrialisation and Job Creation strategy, led to an ILO supported workshop. ZBiDF was part of the team to develop a national framework on Work Based Learnerships.
- Facilitated the first phase of the development of a new cassava national strategy.
- Mobilised financial support to various national development programmes that include Cassava to Flour Partnership aimed at creating employment and poverty reduction through increased production and processing of cassava.
- Instrumental in developing public and private partnerships to accelerate progress, value chain development and achieve scale.
