- By Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane, MP (Liuwa)
Minister of Finance and National Planning
Zambia’s Constituency Development Fund (CDF), reaffirmed in the CDF Act No. 1 of 2024 and executed through the 2024/2025 guidelines, represents the country’s most ambitious move toward fiscal decentralisation. Designed as an equity mechanism, the Act guarantees uniform constituency allocations, while the guidelines translate this mandate into an integrated framework centred on inclusion, climate resilience, transparency, value for money, and community ownership.
At the core of the guidelines are five organising principles: bottom-up planning through participatory committees; equitable access for underserved populations; Area-Based Development (ABD) targeting poverty hotspots; strengthened governance and digital transparency; and sustainability across environmental, social, and climate dimensions. These pillars guide the entire project lifecycle—from planning and budgeting to procurement, monitoring, closure, and public reporting.
CDF budgeting begins with a nationally approved, ring-fenced allocation. Funds flow from the Ministry of Finance and National Planning to the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, which verifies compliance before disbursing to provincial and district authorities. A strengthened Management Information System now captures disbursements, procurement actions, and project milestones, embedding transparency and accountability into the system architecture.
Provincial Development Coordinating Committees (PDCC’s) serve as strategic integrators—aligning CDF proposals with provincial plans, ABD clusters, sectoral priorities, and climate resilience strategies. They review high-value projects, enforce safeguards, and validate quarterly performance.
District Development Coordinating Committees (DDCC’s) ensure that CDF is fully embedded within district planning instruments. Their mandate includes technical appraisal, conflict resolution, joint monitoring, and integration of gender, social protection, youth development, and resilience measures.
At the constituency level, the expanded Constituency Development Coordinating Committee (CDCC) functions as the decision-making core, with representation from women, youth, persons with disabilities, traditional leaders, and sector experts. It enforces statutory spending thresholds, ABD clustering, safeguards, value-for-money appraisals, empowerment vetting, and structured grievance handling.
At the grassroots, Ward Development Committees (WDC’s) remain the anchor of participatory development—conducting needs assessments, mapping vulnerabilities, coordinating land-use consent, drafting ABD-aligned proposals, and participating in real-time monitoring. Their strengthened role elevates local accountability and legitimises community ownership.
Procurement follows the Public Procurement Act but now operates under standardised templates, climate-resilient design norms, contractor vetting, quarterly reporting, and enforcement of penalties for non-performance. Empowerment funds are channelled through vetted institutions with digital tracking to ensure recoveries and long-term sustainability.
Oversight follows a cascading reporting chain from WDCC to Central Government, reinforced by community scorecards, public registers, digital audits, and scrutiny from the Auditor General. A cap on unspent funds incentivises disciplined utilisation.
CDF is often misread through urban lenses that overlook the deep service deficits in rural Zambia. In communities without basic infrastructure, a single bridge, clinic, classroom block, or feeder road materially alters economic prospects. The Guidelines frame CDF not as a political instrument but as a long-term structural correction to spatial inequity—anchored in legislation, multi-level governance, ABD clustering, digital transparency, and lived community realities.
CDF is, fundamentally, a developmental mechanism—foundational to an inclusive, climate-resilient, and equitable national growth pathway. Some constituencies are too large for CDF to be effective.
The Case for Constituency Delimitation
Modernising constituency boundaries is essential to protect development effectiveness, strengthen resource allocation and build an inclusive economic future.
Zambia’s constitutional review process has attracted intense public debate, some of it emotional and deeply political. This is not unexpected. Any nation that takes its Constitution seriously must anticipate sharp disagreements whenever foundational rules are under consideration.
Amid this public discourse, it is vital that the country does not lose sight of one of the central policy questions before it: whether delimitation of excessively large constituencies is necessary to improve representation, decentralise development further, strengthen service delivery, enhance implementation capacity, and expand access to empowerment opportunities for ordinary citizens—especially the youth and our mothers.
On that core question, the development case for delimitation remains not only valid but compelling.
International development institutions, including the UNDP, have consistently shown that governance systems must evolve when population structures change; otherwise inequalities deepen and development becomes uneven.
This reflects Naila Kabeer’s observation that “inequalities do not simply happen; they are produced and reproduced through institutions, policies, and social norms” — Naila Kabeer, Reversed Realities (1994). Frozen boundaries are one such institution that inadvertently reproduces territorial disadvantage.
Our founding Father, Kenneth Kaunda affirms the essence of equitable representation: “A nation cannot develop unless all its people are given the opportunity to participate fully in its life and decisions” — Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia Shall Be Free (1962).
Evidence from modern economics—reflected strongly in the work of Paul Krugman—shows that inequality hardens when institutional structures fail to adjust to the real distribution of people and economic activity. Krugman, a Nobel Peace Prize Winner (Economics)argues that “geography and institutions interact to shape economic outcomes in powerful ways” — Paul Krugman, Geography and Trade (1991).
When boundaries stay fixed while populations grow and shift, opportunity becomes misallocated and disadvantage becomes structurally reinforced.
This aligns with Joseph Stiglitz’s broader view that unequal systems persist when structures are not periodically realigned with the needs of society. Stiglitz, a Nobel Peace Prize Winner (Economics) notes that “inequality is not inevitable; it is a choice shaped by policies and institutions” — Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality (2012).
Delimitation is therefore not a novelty engineered for Zambia. It is a standard democratic instrument used across functioning constitutional systems to ensure representation keeps pace with population growth, settlement patterns, infrastructure expansion, and other evolving social needs.
UNDP’s governance principles reinforce this, emphasising that “decentralisation reforms must reflect demographic realities to ensure proximity, responsiveness, and effective participation” — UNDP, Human Development Report (various editions).
Likewise, the World Bank has repeatedly demonstrated that oversized governance units weaken service delivery, accountability, and programme implementation across diverse country contexts.
Zambia’s population has now crossed 20 million, yet the number of constituencies remains frozen at 156—a configuration inherited from a demographic era that no longer exists. This mismatch has quietly evolved into a governance risk. A continental development bank’s governance analysis reaches a similar conclusion: governance structures that fail to adjust to demographic and spatial transitions inevitably constrain development.
Paulo Freire offers an insight that is deeply relevant to this moment: “To speak a true word is to transform the world” — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). Avoiding necessary structural reforms—like delimitation—means accepting the status quo that no longer reflects Zambia’s lived reality.
Critics have framed the current constituency boundary reform debate as a partisan manoeuvre. But even without political actors in the picture, Zambia would still confront the structural problem of oversized constituencies undermining development effectiveness. Administrative units that exceed manageable population or geographic thresholds weaken service delivery, implementation precision, and accountability.
African governance experiences consistently show that accountability and equity decline when representation is stretched beyond functional limits. ASEAN’s regional development institutions similarly observe that periodic boundary adjustments improve planning, service delivery, and programme implementation — ASEAN Secretariat, ASEAN Governance and Public Administration Report (2018).
In some regions of Zambia, a single Member of Parliament is responsible for populations equal to or exceeding those of entire districts elsewhere. This reality affects how frequently leaders can engage communities, how effectively projects are supervised, how equitably bursaries are allocated, and how quickly service bottlenecks are resolved.
International institutions such as the International Organisation for Migration and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre have shown how relocation, urbanisation, and population movements reshape service burdens and demand governance structures that match real population distribution. Zambia’s situation reflects this pattern.
Kabeer’s perspective is once again useful: “When people are excluded from the decisions that affect their lives, development becomes something that is done to them rather than by them” — Naila Kabeer, Resources, Agency, Achievements (1999).
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan reinforces this principle: “Good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development” — Kofi Annan, UN Millennium Declaration Address (2000).
Across Africa and beyond, the evidence is clear: states that periodically adjust administrative units to match population and service realities achieve stronger development outcomes, more equitable resource allocation, and more consistent implementation.
CDF is now one of Zambia’s most powerful tools for grassroots development. But unusually large constituencies dilute its power—stretching implementation, supervision, and opportunity so thinly that equity becomes impossible.
By dividing oversized constituencies into units that reflect real settlement patterns and service geography, both service delivery and implementation capacity improve immediately.
Delimitation strengthens participation, enhances fairness, improves monitoring, and enables representation that reaches people—not just territory.
Conclusion
For policy commentators and governance observers, it is vital to guard against prejudiced perspectives. Let us not underestimate the transformative effect CDF has in remote constituencies where a bridge, borehole, classroom block, maternity annex, or 10km feeder road can redefine economic opportunity for an entire generation. CDF is not a political convenience; it is a structural correction to decades of unequal development.
It is Zambia’s most ambitious initiative in place-based equity, backed by legislation, guided by robust multi-level committees, strengthened by ABD, protected by transparency, and driven by the lived realities of citizens who—unlike their urban counterparts—have waited longest for basic services.
Understanding the need for delimitation to improve the effectiveness of constituency development requires setting aside urban prejudice and embracing the truth the CDF guidelines make clear: for millions of rural Zambians, CDF is not supplementary—it is foundational to a fair, inclusive, resilient, and better-served national development pathway.
Verdict: delimitation is not political but developmental—essential for equity, inclusion, service delivery, and institutional empowerment.
NOTE THAT:All references to international organisations and authors have been made for contextual purposes ONLY and do not represent their views on the current constituency amendment debate in the country.
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