Agriculture Sector:
Agriculture remains a key driver of economic growth and poverty reduction. Government’s strategic focus in the agriculture sector is to achieve food security, promote crop diversification, as well as increase productivity and value addition.
The Government of the Republic of Zambia has embarked on the development and commercialisation of nine Farm Blocks by making land available for large scale investment to the private sector. The whole Farm Block is expected to be about 100,000 hectares in size. The core venture land is in extent of 9,350 hectares, and the commercial farms, in extent of between 1,500 and 5, 000 hectares. Applications are being sought from private sector investors to develop the Core Venture and commercial farms by putting up appropriate infrastructure that will support their agro-business activities. This will also help the development of the small, medium and large scale farmers through Out-grower schemes for cash-generating agriculture activities for both local and international market.
Government focus: to encourage investment of large scale and commercial farmers.
To simplify agricultural land delivery to would be local and foreign direct investors, the Zambian Government has annexed more than 1 million hectares of virgin land from the traditional sector to the state.