EXPANDED CDF, A GAME CHANGER
30 years after being created, the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) is more popular than ever. With a new evolvement in close to four years, the Fund has sunk its teeth in zambia’s road to economic recovery.
In the period the UPND administration has been in government, under the stewardship of President Hakainde Hichilema, the New Dawn administration has worked overtime to ensure the successful implementation of the expanded CDF.
Established in 1995 after approval by the national assembly as a community initiative tool to help provide and facilitate development in constituencies through community projects, the CDF until 2021 had never crossed the mark of K2bn.
The truth of the matter was that such meagre amounts could not meet the ever growing cost of meeting meaningful community development.
The CDF figures announced in previous budgets before the 2021 national budget were almost a mere drop in the ocean.
President Hakainde Hichilema, in his first budget as a leader of the nation, increased the CDF from K1.6 million to a whopping K25.7 million annual allocation per Constituency, then to K28.3 million. 36.1 million and now 40 million in the 2026 budget per Constituency.
The CDF has been partitioned in three components, namely, community projects, youth, women, and community empowerment and secondary boarding school and skills development burseries.
Already, the components highlight the objectivity of inclusiveness exhibited by the wider scope that the Fund is encompassing.
The realistic fund allocation to constituencies has evidently opened a number of opportunities for communities to embark on feasible progressive projects that have been identified as being beneficial to a broader section of their communities.
If the current keenness being exhibited by most members of Parliament of embarking on different Constituency projects and meeting the requirements of prudently disbursing the Fund, then sooner than later, Zambia’s expanded CDF will be a successful model for the whole of Africa and the world at large to emulate.
The social cash transfer program, food security pack, and purchase of drugs and medical supplies are just some of the areas that are being driven by the expanded CDF.
Rural primary school classrooms, teachers’ houses, desks , rural clinics, staff houses, local courts, community boreholes, dip tanks, small dams, and bridges are all being funded under the expanded CDF.
Financial experts are calling it a game changer and have added that the new CDF can be used to mobilise external resources innovatively.
4 years down the line, it is safe to say the CDF has recorded success. It is safe to say the model is working, and the positive indicators are out there and clear for all to see.
In a 2022 report that shows how the CDF can attract external funding for sustainable development in Zambia, Dr. Sylvia Mwamba, a public finance expert from ZIPAR, said, “Since 2022, the expanded CDF has breathed life into Zambia’s inclusive and sustainable growth agenda , re-energising local economies.”
This means the Fund can help unlock development financing from international funders through grants triggered by the country’s demonstration of embarking on an ambitious socio- economic transformation agenda that involves citizen participation.
At the end of the day, the outcome in terms of fiscal investments should match or, depending on projects embarked on and implemented, exceed the input.
It is worth noting that other African countries are also using CDF model to unlock their countries’ socio-economic and infrastructure development. This list includes Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, among others.
Article Credit: Excel Magazine, 3rd issue.