Climate change is threatening Zambian crops and livestock systems, impacting agriculture businesses and undermining livelihoods.

It is increasingly urgent for Zambian farmers and livestock keepers to be able to anticipate climate-related events and take appropriate preventative actions.

AICCRA-Zambia aims to improve water, food and energy security through access to knowledge, technologies, and decision-making tools, to strengthen climate resilience in Zambia's agriculture and food systems in the face of a hotter and drier climate.

AICCRA-Zambia works with Zambian partners by scaling actionable climate information services and climate-smart agriculture technologies which promote gender and social inclusion: 

• Sustainable financing for off-grid solar irrigation
• Integrated aquaculture-agriculture systems; 
• Climate smart seed varieties to address drought
• Diversified chicken and goat-legume systems

AICCRA-Zambia strengthens local capacity by training intermediaries in how to communicate climate services.

The team also provide local internship programs and accelerator grants for SMEs and entrepreneurs, all while assessing the challenges to fostering an enabling environment for startups in Zambia. 

The AICCRA-Zambia Accelerator Grant - which awards five grants of up to US$50,000 each to partnerships formed by Zambian Agri-SMEs - was launched in October 2021.

This initiative brings together representatives from the private and public sector, non-government organisations and research institutions to explore possible partnership models with actors from across Zambia’s agribusiness ecosystem.

Similarly, the AICCRA-Zambia team inform policy and enhance investment by identifying suitable financing mechanisms, using innovative fiscal tools to de-risk private sector investment in food value chains.

Such activities seek to build climate resilience of Zambia’s ‘missing middle’—its agribusiness SMEs and start-ups—to support a climate-smart future for Zambia.