Table of Contents

Introduction...........................................................................................................................................1

CEEC Mandate functions......................................................................................................................2

Success stories of CEEC........................................................................................................................2

Challenges of Citizens Economic Empowerment Funds.......................................................................4

Politicization of empowerment and Corruption.................................................................................6

Marketing communications...............................................................................................................7

Money is no panacea for empowerment............................................................................................7

Private sector partnership and participation.......................................................................................8

Digital approach to citizens empowerment........................................................................................8

Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................8

References.............................................................................................................................................9

Introduction
The desire to empower citizens in Zambia has been a common call for all successive
governments in one way or the other. Through the policy of nationalization, the government
had hoped to plough all the nations' resources in on central place. The next government
thought privatization was going to improve people's living standards through ownership of
businesses. The failures of these programmes are well documented. Against this background,
the paper is a consultation plan for the Citizens Empowerment Commission to improve its
sustainability considering the problems, challenges and opportunity being faced in achieving
its mission in the next five years. This consultation essay traced the background leading to the
establishment of the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission. Its functions and aims
were fully discussed, in that it provides a mechanism through which citizens are empowered
by being availed with loans for project finance and other start up businesses. Factors that
have contributed to the Commission's failure to perform adequately have been stated as
including lack of financial resources both for administration or operational and actual find
capital meant for loan approvals. Other challenges cited include poor staffing levels in
districts other than the provincial capitals, shortage of skilled empowerment officers, failure
to introduce online approvals as well as the stringent accounting financial statements as a
prerequisite for loan finance for business applicants. Lack of autonomy, adequate office space
as well as limited publicity concludes the challenges. The author concludes that the
Commission has not performed in a satisfactory manner and unless some of the concerns are
addressed, in line with the recommendations, no meaningful impact shall be felt in the nearest
future.

CEEC Mandate functions

The Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) is a very important institution in
the government structure. It forms an integral part through which poverty reduction can be
achieved. The commission makes an effort to ensure that government efforts are felt that the
grassroots level. This is done through the provision of credit to the targeted group of citizens
whose success should have a multiplier effect on the economy as a whole.

The Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) is a body corporate established

through the enactment of the Citizens Economic Empowerment Act No. 9 of 2006 to foster
broad-based economic empowerment in Zambia.

Broad-based economic empowerment is defined in the Act as 'the economic empowerment of

targeted citizens, citizen influenced companies, citizen empowered companies and citizen
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owned companies through diverse but integrated socio-economic strategies that include
ownership of productive assets and resources, increasing the levels of employment in the
formal sector, increasing household incomes, expanding literacy and skills development, and
ensuring preferential procurement and access to services of state institutions.

The Commission is responsible for investing and administering the Citizens Economic
Empowerment Fund (CEEF), which has by law been established under Part IV of the CEE
Ac No.9 of 2006. The purpose of the Fund is to support the development of broad-based
economic empowerment programmes and is the principal vehicle through which the
Commission provides interest bearing business loans to targeted citizens.

Success stories of CEEC

The Citizens Economic Empowerment Act was enacted in 2006 and it gave birth to Zambia's
first empowerment Commission whose sole purpose was to target the most vulnerable in
Society. With a capital injection of ZMW130 million from the African Development Bank
(AfDB) the construction of Industrial Yards earnestly started in Mongu, Solwezi, Kasama,
Ndola and Chipata. The Industrial Yards will bring a modern era of light manufacturing for
targeted citizens in the areas of metal fabrication, woodwork, auto-mechanics, gemstone
processing and agro-processing (CEEC Annual Report 2018).

Implementation of the ZMW440 million Aquaculture Seed Fund, which is a Component of

the Zambia Aquaculture Enterprise Development Project, started in 2018. The Ministry of
Fisheries and Livestock appointed the Commission to be the Manager of the Fund which is
being financed by AfDB. The Seed Fund, which is being implemented in 35 districts
covering all provinces of the country, will lead to each province being self sufficient in the
production of fingerlings and to the wiping out of the deficit of 85,000 metric tonnes in
national annual fish production over the next four years. The objective is for Zambia to
transform into a net exporter of fish and fish products within the next ten years. This will be
one of the most poverty reducing development programmes in the history of Zambia and
citizens will engage in the entire value chain, fish production, supply of feed, cold chain
services, fish processing, marketing and others.

The construction of Mongu. Solwezi, Kasama. Ndola and Chipata Industrial Yards
commenced in 2018 and continued into 2020. This is under the ZMW360 million Skills
Development and Entrepreneurship Project -Supporting Women and Youth being

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implemented by the Commission with support from the AfDB. The five Industrial Yards are
set to provide 160 industrial workshops targeting metal fabrication, woodwork, auto-
mechanics, agro-processing and gemstone processing. Other facilities will include common-
use amenities such as kilns and spray booths. Each Industrial Yard is expected create 500
sustainable light manufacturing jobs mostly for young people and women.

Under the same Project, the Cassava Commercialization Component, in which ZMW82
million is being invested, took a giant leap forward with the funding of 22 cassava processing
projects in Luapula, Northern, Copperbelt and Northwestern Provinces. boost the market for
the 12,000 smallholder farmers that are being supported to grow high-yielding, early
maturing and disease-free cassava in Mushindamo, Solwezi, Kalumbila, Mana and Kasama
Distrcts of Northwestern, Luapula and Northern Provinces. The projects include the
processing of gari, cassava flour, cassava starch and glue amongst others. The Cassava
Commercialization Initiative is intended to transform Zambia into a major producer of
cassava value-added products in the human food, stock feed and industrial products. The
Initiative will create more than 12,000 on-farm and other value chain jobs.

The Commission registered a breakthrough in its efforts to leverage financing for

empowerment programmes through partnerships. In July 2018 the Commission entered into
an agreement with the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock for the implementation of the
Aquaculture Seed Fund of the AfDB-funded Zambia Aquaculture Enterprise Development
Project (ZAEDP) being implemented by the Ministry. Under the Agreement, the Commission
will receive ZMW275 million from the Ministry if Fisheries and Livestock as Fund Manager
to provide empowerment business loans and business development services along the
Aquaculture Value Chain in 35 districts covering all provinces of the country. Through
aquaculture, the Project seeks to eliminate the national deficit of 80,000 metric tonnes in fish
production by 2022 and transform Zambia into a net exporter of both fish and fish value-
added products. The Project will create more than 12,000 jobs within the first two years,
especially in rural areas. The Project is focusing on boosting production and processing of
tilapia (bream) and catfish. To empower citizens and address the critical shortage of
fingerlings in the country the Commission launched, as part of the Project, a Special Initiative
for establishment of fish hatcheries and nurseries in all provinces of the country with the
objective of facilitating the citizen-driven businesses to produce 44 million fingerlings for

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fish farmers that will be supported under the Project as well as for others in the domestic
market.

The rural outreach of approved projects continued to meet the 90% threshold. By the close of
the year 2018 the rural share of approved projects remained at 92% same as what was
recorded in 2017 because there were no new projects approved due to lack of funding from
the Treasury. The Commission has been able to meet the target for rural outreach as a result
of a deliberate policy of easing collateral requirements for projects in rural areas by allowing
them to provide a minimum acceptable mortgage value of 50% of the loan amount, while the
balance is covered by creation of a lien on any assets purchased for the project.

Challenges of Citizens Economic Empowerment Funds

According to a combination of the 2018 Citizen’s Economic Economic Empowerment Fund

Annual Report and 2018 Auditor-General’s Parastatals Report approximately K300m has
been deployed in business empowerment loans and 50% of that is sitting as non-performing
loans leading to the statement that the companies are either failing or non-functional. It looks
like this new iteration of empowerment funding is simply doomed to follow in the graveyard
of its ancestors and predecessors.

The truth is no matter how much money is pumped into Government Empowerment Funds
their failure to succeed is driven by structural factors not financial ones (Mwape, 2020,
August). The government’s Citizens economic empowerment initiatives have not worked and
will continued not working in future unless a reset button is pressed, and a number of reforms
are undertaken. The initiatives’ impact on job creation and poverty alleviation so far has been
negligible.

Starting with accessibility, not everyone is able to access services of the commission in that
CEEC has provincial offices in all ten provinces of Zambia. At district levels, applications
forms are administered by the District Commissioners office and in most cases only cadres
have access to these forms(Zambia Daily Mail, 2007, January 7).

Second challenge is documentary requirement prior to loan approval is very stringent making
it difficult for many Zambians to access these funds. One can deduce from the onset that no
one can be allowed to access commission funds without having a business in the first place.
This is centrally to the purpose for which the commission was set up and it cuts the real poor
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people from accessing the funds (Kachungu, 2011:23). In addition, the requirement of the
physical asserts before the application is proved means that for start up business they are
already exempted from accessing these funds.

The third challenge that the commission is currently facing inadequate representation in all
the districts of Zambia. Each province has only one Provincial Empowerment Coordinator
(PEC) and in districts they are served by District Commissioners office. This renders the
performance of the Commission to susceptible to political interference as there are no
guidelines to guard against political interference since these District Commissioners are
political appointees who are likely to favour the interest of the ruling government (ibid).

The current perception in Zambia among the majority of the Zambians is that the government
is not doing enough to empower them with jobs or through entrepreneurship promotion.
However, the reality is that there are so many Citizens empowerment programmes that the
government has put in place but most youths, men and women are not aware of them or not
benefiting from them for various reasons. President Lungu in his July 2020 address to the
nation appealed to the Youth to make use of the programmes.

“I implore the Zambian youth to take keen interest in participating and profiting from
different empowerment initiatives my government is putting in place, instead of protesting in
the bush and taking pride in how many views of their protests were seen on social media,”
The President said while addressing the nation on a Covid-19 measures and economic issues.

Although government has a myriad of programmes for the youth, they are going about it the
wrong way in their implementation thus leading to them having negligible impact. When one
analyses how the government has reacted to the youth protests, it appears that they do not
seem to be aware why these empowerment initiatives are not working as they just keep doing
the same things- throwing money at the problem.

To recap, according to publically available information, there are over six major youth
empowerment initiatives that are currently in place and in progress. These programmes are:
Youth Development fund, Women empowerment fund under Development Bank of Zambia,
Skills and entrepreneurship project through the creation of industrial parks under African
development Bank, The $29million Zambia aquaculture enterprise development project under
African development fund, Cassava Value Chain Programme under the Citizen Economic

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Empowerment Commission (CEEC), Aquaculture Value Chain Initiative under CEEC. There
must be other empowerment initiatives in various ministries which are not publicized.

Recently, the President announced another programme of K30 million as the Artists
empowerment Scheme. And on Sunday the 28 June, 2020, Minister of Youth, Sport and
Child development, Emmanuel Mulenga in an interview also announced that government will
be launching another empowerment scheme for the general youth population who are not
artists, and a consortium of Ministers were to meet at Mulungushi Conference Centre on 2
July, 2020 to hammer out an empowerment scheme (Lusaka Times, 2020)

Politicization of empowerment and Corruption

Another major problem that has contributed to the failure of youth empowerment
programmes achieving their objectives is the fact they are highly politicized. Deserving
youths are not having access to these initiatives. The various administrations under the MMD
and PF have abused the programmes for political purposes and the Zambia Institute for
Policy analysis study of the Youth Development Fund alludes to this.

”The involvement of politicians in the disbursement of funds has negatively influenced the
public perception of the Fund and its potential as a youth economic empowerment vehicle.
This is because the Fund is highly linked to the political structures, which make youths think
the funds are a political reward or benefit, and this perception could have significantly
affected repayments”. ZIPAR study observed.

They are also allegations of corruption in the award of empowerment funds and there is need
to work on corruption (Mwape, 2020).

The first reform, therefore, should be to stop using the empowerment programmes as political
tools of rewarding supporters of the ruling Party so that the awards are made on merit. The
reality is that if the programmes are available to all the youth, the Party in empower can in
fact increase its support base and there will be no protests of unfairness in sharing the cake. In
order to achieve this reform, there is need to outsource the programmes to independent
private sector players.

Marketing communications
The other major reform that is needed is the overall of the marketing communications of the
initiatives. The majority of citizens do not know about the existence of the empowerment
programmes and they lack information on how to access such programmes. There is no
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aggressive promotion of these initiatives at the moment. It appears only the privileged and
selected few know about them and where to go.

In the business world, if you have a product or a service, marketing communication is an

absolute necessity. This entails adopting the means of conveying messages about your
product or services to your customers with intention to persuade them to purchase. The
second reform that is required, therefore, is the provision of a substantial budget in these
youth empowerment programmes for continuous promotion including highlighting the
success stories of beneficiaries. The current casual appeals to youth to take advantage of the
initiatives are clearly not having any impact.

Money is no panacea for empowerment

The current approach appears to be premised on the flawed assumption that money is the
panacea to citizen economic empowerment and is the only impediment to solving youth
problems. And as such, once funds were provided, Citizens were going to set up businesses
and create jobs. But any knowledgeable person in the empowerment eco system knows that
money is only a part of the solution. Citizen’s economic empowerment programmes should
be designed in such way that other resources like business development services, practical
youth entrepreneurship training, information dissemination, market and supply chain
linkages, mentoring and coaching are incorporated.

Private sector partnership and participation

The fourth reform is the involvement of the Private sector. It is crystal clear that one of the
major reasons why Citizens economic empowerment programmes fail is the fact that the
Private sector are not involved by government in the design of the programme, its
implementation and its monitoring. There is need for the relevant government ministries such
Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Ministry of Tourism and Ministry of Youth, Sport and
Child Development to involve the private sector by tapping into the private sector expertise
and possibly out sourcing some of the services as well as entering into some form of Public
Private Partnerships (PPP).The line Ministry can still be able to be in charge of the overall
management of the programme. The African development Bank research does speak to this
issue as far as youth entrepreneurship and job creation is concerned.

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Digital approach to citizens empowerment
The fifth reform is to adopt and incorporate the digital approach in solving youth
empowerment in order to have the widest reach. The recent virtual protest by some of the
youth demonstrated the power of ICT to achieve objectives quickly as there were able to
reach about half a million within hours and counting. Whether dismissed or not, the approach
had better impact than the physical protest they originally intended. The government should
also be innovative in this regard.

Conclusion
In the light of all the above empowerment programmes, and the ones planned for the future.
In the absence of these proposed reforms and others, there is nothing that will change. There
will be no firms or jobs created and funds will just go into a bottomless pit like in the past.

References
CEEC Annual Report 2018

Daily mail, January, 7, 2011

Mwape Sichalwe (2020). How Government can reform Youth empowerment programmes
to create jobs this time around. Lusaka Times, Column, Retrieved on 17th September 2020
8
fromhttps://www.lusakatimes.com/2020/07/01/how-government-can-reform-youth-
empowerment-programmes-to-create-jobs-this-time-around/

Kachungu Evans (2011). Impact of CEEC from inception to date. Lusaka: University of
Zambia

Lusaka Times (August,13 2020). President Lungu to launch a multi-million youth

empowerment fund in Kitwe this Weekend. Lusaka Times. Retrieved on 18th September
from https://www.lusakatimes.com/2020/08/13/president-lungu-to-launch-a-multi-million-
youth-empowerment-fund-in-kitwe-this-weekend/