From emergency response to early action.
Zambia’s 2023/2024 El Niño drought affected 84 of the country’s 116 districts. It cut maize production by more than half, pushed hydropower output down and strained water, health, education and public finances. The lesson was clear: by the time a drought is declared, much of the damage is already done.
The Multi-Stakeholder El Niño Preparedness and Response Strategy 2027-2031 is Zambia’s framework for acting earlier. It is led by the Government of the Republic of Zambia through the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU). It was developed with ministries, civil society, development partners and the private sector.
Services provided
- Strategy development: drafting the national El Niño Strategy and its nine sector plans from stakeholder inputs
- Policy alignment: linking the Strategy to the National Adaptation Plan, the NDC, national water and disaster law, Sendai and the SDGs
- Governance design: defining institutional roles, the RACI matrix and coordination from national to community level
- Anticipatory action: designing the trigger-action-financing protocol, the activation and stand-down rules and the seasonal readiness calendar
- Costing and financing: compiling sector budgets and shaping a mix of public, climate, partner, private and risk-transfer finance
- Monitoring and learning: building the results framework, the MEAL matrix and the review and evaluation arrangements
- Stakeholder engagement: running working-group consultations and the validation and sign-off process
- Capacity building: designing a train-the-trainer cascade for agriculture officers and farmers