EU Donates €2m To Zambian Children In Drought-Hit Districts

The European Union has donated €2 million (K42.1 million) to UNICEF to help children suffering from the effects of drought and Covid-19 in Zambia’s Southern And Western Provinces. 

UNICEF will use the funding to provide comprehensive nutrition services to treat children who are acutely malnourished in 21 districts. 

The aid agency is also supporting the training of nearly 4,200 community volunteers in child feeding and emergency counselling. 

The project will last for a period of 15 months and is estimated to benefit over 160,000 people, of which 11,887 are children aged between 6 and 59 months. 

The partnership will provide safe water supplies to 25 health facilities and 81 communities. It will also secure hygiene supplies such as soap and hand sanitiser to 100 in-patient and out-patient facilities to help limit the spread of Covid-19. 

The EU’s ambassador to Zambia, Jacek Jankowski, said the bloc had a long history of supporting Zambia and looked forward to other projects that would benefit the southern African nation. EU

“Apart from from European Union’s emergency allocation of €2 million in direct response to the drought, we will soon sign with UNICEF the €10 million co-financing of the multi-donor funded Scaling Up Nutrition Phase II (SUN II) programme. The objective is to support the implementation of Zambia’s 1,000 Most Critical Days Programme (MCDP) in a coordinated, integrated and effective manner, under the guidance of the National Food and Nutrition Commission (NFNC),” he said.