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The content of the PRSP
Zambia’s PRSP is for the period 2002 to 2004.
The PRSP document consists of 17 chapters. The first four chapters deal with the
Macroeconomic Situation, Poverty Profile, Governance Issues and National Goals and
Objectives of the PRSP. The next four chapters deal with the economic sectors of Agriculture,
Industry, Tourism and Mining. These chapters are followed by chapters on the two key social
sectors - Education and Health. Then follow three chapters dealing with infrastructure
development: Water and Sanitation, Energy, and Transport, Communication & Roads. The next
chapter, Chapter 15 discusses the cross-cutting issues of HIV/AIDS, Gender and Environment.
The last two chapters are on the PRSP Implementation Mechanisms and Structures and on
Monitoring and Evaluation.
The text of the PRSP is followed by three Appendices. Appendix 1 discusses the Participatory
Process in the PRSP. Appendix 2 provides the log frames containing the Objectives, Actions
and Costing. Appendix 3 describes the Objectively Verifiable Indicators.
The content in the above chapters revolves around three main themes: the economic theme, the
social theme and the cross-cutting theme. These themes are related to two main approaches to
achieve the overall goal of poverty reduction. The first approach is to generate sustained
economic growth and employment. Agricultural development is regarded as the main engine of
growth (since it can provide the best opportunities for enhancing the livelihoods of the poor).
Agriculture is to be complemented by other sectors that are considered to have high growthstimulating
potential, namely, Tourism, Industry, Mining and Energy. The issues dealing with
the growth of the economy are termed the economic theme of the PRSP.
The high levels of poverty in Zambia, however, cannot be brought down solely by the trickledown
effects from growth. Hence, there is also need to adopt a second approach that provides
for complementary measures that directly target the poor and shield them against the adverse
impacts of economic reforms and other internal and external factors. The PRSP, therefore, also
stresses the importance of basic education, basic health and social safety nets such as the Public
Welfare Assistance Schemes (PWAS), Social Recovery Fund, Project Urban Self Help (PUSH),
Food for Work Programme and entrepreneurial development and training for the retrenched
employees. These areas constitute the social theme of the PRSP.
In addition to the above, there are also issues that impact on both the growth and the direct
interventionist measures. These are the cross-cutting themes – HIV/AIDS, gender and
environment.
The PRSP document recognizes that Zambia’s development is constrained by a tripod of
barriers that are mutually reinforcing namely high levels of poverty, high debt burden and the
high incidence of HIV/AIDS. It therefore stresses the need to complement efforts at poverty
reduction with efforts to address the problems of debt and HIV/AIDS.
We shall now focus on some of the specific aspects of the content of the PRSP document.
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