The Zambian agricultural sector rests on the shoulders of an estimated 1.6 million smallholder farmers. It is envisaged that graduating them into commercial farming will create the much-needed impetus to dent high levels of poverty and unemployment. Nearly 3 decades after the initiation of agricultural market reforms in sub-Saharan Africa,…
Zambian President Edgar Lungu, incensed with the slow pace of farmer input delivery, has ordered the Ministers of Finance and Agriculture to immediately double efforts. This, as the latest evidence shows less than 4 000 of the 1 million smallholder farmer beneficiaries have already paid K400, but are yet to…
The Zambian treasury has released funds in what might be a crucial step to avert problems like the payment of farmers and transporters, and the initial roll-out of the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP), under the full electronic voucher (e-voucher) payment system. The payment follows a directive by President Edgar…
The Zambian Minister of Agriculture, Dora Siliya, told lawmakers that the government’s Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) failed to reach its objective of supporting small-scale farmers to become commercially viable. Compounding the situation, she said, was the fact that government was losing huge amounts of money paying ghost farmers. In…
