Research

The distribution of both public healthcare spending and overall healthcare spending has become increasingly egalitarian in Burkina Faso, Malawi, and Zambia, according to a new study. Nevertheless, there remain significant regional differences within countries. In addition, limitations in data...

Linking Zambia to the port of Nacala in Mozambique (via Malawi), the Nacala Regional Corridor has been poorly maintained. AFD is currently supporting its rehabilitation, a priority for Zambia, but also for Mozambique and Malawi.

Zambia, located in the north of Southern Africa and home to fewer than 18 million people, has built its development model on the abundance of natural, mainly mineral, resources. The country ranks as Africa’s second and the world’s tenth largest copper producer. In addition, the country has a...

The collaboration between AFD and Team Europe in Southern Africa allows us the opportunity to increase our reach, impact and visibility in the region. The EU Partnership with the AFD Group allows us as a collective to concretize our actions and allows...

Both public spending and overall spending on curative services have become more egalitarian in Zambia with the rollout of Universal Health Coverage policies across the country. New research finds that the distribution of benefits from public spending remains consistently pro-poor, except at...

Semestrial Panoramas are special issues of the MacroDev series written by AFD analysts; They present a synthesis of macronomic et socioeconomic analyses of emerging and developing countries. In addition to short, country-focused articles, a thematic section sheds light on broader economic and...

The current development of African education systems focuses on the perspective of universal completion of six years of schooling. This perspective, targeted by the international community for the year 2015 (Dakar declaration, Millennium Development Goals), will no doubt be reached by a number of...

Southern Africa has a rich natural heritage of global significance to the world’s climate and biological diversity. Unfortunately, the capacity of nature to maintain this biological wealth is rapidly diminishing due to habitat loss and degradation resulting from unsustainable development,...

The Copperbelt Province, Northern Zambia, is the second most populous province in the country with some 2 million inhabitants, 60% of which live in underserved urban areas where access to drinking water and sanitation stands at 25% compared to national average of 38%. The existing water...

Research is a fundamental first step toward designing successful development projects, as it gives important insights into the political, socio-economic and environmental context in which projects will be implemented. Research helps fine-tune development projects to the realities on the ground,...

The Mulonga water project in the Copperbelt Province was initiated to change lives of 530 000 people, by providing safe access to sanitation and drinking water. The project aims to improve living conditions of people living in three cities – Mufurila, Chingola and Chililabombwe.  ©...

Zambia is developing its power grid in order to meet the growing energy needs of its economy and population and reduce its energy dependence.

On the occasion of World Biodiversity Day, we take you to the heart of five ecosystem preservation projects financed by AFD in Southern Africa, via a virtual exhibition, which will be accessible for a full year, until May, 2022.

Southern Africa has access to a wealth of primary renewable energy sources, with enough geothermal, hydro, wind and solar resources to provide gigawatts of power. However, the adoption of low-carbon technologies is uneven and hampered by technical, financial and regulatory barriers that slow...

Sub-Saharan African countries have been experiencing a persistently high level of inequality in access to healthcare services. Following the global call to eliminate health inequalities worldwide, different investments in health policies towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) have been made in...

A new study examines the distributional incidence of healthcare spending in three countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding the techniques used to conduct the analysis will help key decisions on both future policy and future data collection.  

On the youngest continent in the world where more than half of the population is under 25, African youth are key players in sectors ranging from sports and creative industries to entrepreneurship and innovation. AFD Group has collected the stories of 16 young entrepreneurs it’s supporting, as...

Southern Africa has some of the most developed infrastructure in the continent. However, the region still faces numerous challenges, such as insufficient energy supply, highly priced and unpredictable transport, lack of low-cost access to information and communication technologies, and high...

Access to education, healthcare, decent housing and employment are fundamental to human dignity, and are key to achieve poverty eradication. In Southern Africa, although poverty rates fell by almost half between 1996 and 2012, data shows that consistent economic growth co-exists with growing...