Mission of the Month: Zambia

November 2003

The Challenge

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Zambia kills one person in six, disrupting all aspects of the country’s economy, institutions, and security.

Because the pandemic affects every sector of the USAID program, the Agency’s efforts to support Zambia’s development have become more difficult. Fertile land goes untouched when farmers weaken and their health deteriorate. Lending schemes lose their value because borrowers perish. Teachers and health workers die, and orphans drop out of school.

Innovative USAID Response

Aside from HIV/AIDS prevention and health projects dating from the early 1990s, the Zambia mission started incorporating HIV/AIDS activities into its other projects in the late 1990s.

Scaling up this multisector approach at the heart of the mission's overall strategy in FY 2003.“As we researched the impact of HIV/AIDS, we saw the impact it had on everything,” said Kennedy Musonda, deputy team leader of the multisector program.

Under the strategy, about half of health money going toward HIV/AIDS will be used to lessen the impact of HIV/AIDS in all sectors, including agriculture, education, and democracy and governance.

For example, an agriculture project is printing AIDS prevention messages on fertilizer bags. Education and democracy programs produce HIV/AIDS literature and support public awareness and debate about the pandemic on radio stations and in sporting and social clubs. Workplace counseling pro-grams discuss HIV/AIDS and train educators and staff. Special care has also been taken to reach women: one-third of all counselor-trainees are female.

Classes teach Zambians to prepare nutritional foods that help the ill.

Borrower groups depending on group solidarity to ensure repayment are advised to buy insurance in case members die before the loan is repaid.

Zambia’s multisector approach also teaches HIV-infected farmers how to be more productive. Because HIV/AIDS victims lack energy to carry heavy loads and are unable to endure long work hours, USAID is encouraging them to invest in less labor-intensive agricultural techniques such as using herbicides instead of chopping or pulling weeds.

Farmers are also urged to plant crops that produce higher yields and require less harvesting work, such as cassava, sweet potatoes, and plantains. Among more nutritional crops being promoted are mangoes, bananas, citrus, and sugar cane.

A new project that works with orphans, vulnerable children, and people living with AIDS is central to the overall strategy. This multisector HIV/AIDS program also coordinates and reports on all the mission’s HIV/AIDS-related activities.

Results

“We can’t afford to narrowly define HIV/AIDS as a health problem,” said Deputy Assistant Administrator for Africa Thomas Woods. “That’s why our integrated HIV/AIDS pro-gram is designed to cut across sectors. Our mission has done a wonderful job of mainstreaming our approach to the HIV/AIDS crisis through its programming, and these lessons do much to inform our approach throughout the region.”

USAID/Zambia received a meritorious group citation for its new strategy at the 2003 USAID Annual Awards ceremony.

Access the November 2003 edition of FrontLines [PDF, 3.3MB]