Eastern Kafue Nature Alliance

Kafue National Park is Zambia’s largest and oldest national park. Together with the surrounding game management areas, which buffer the national park, this 69,000 square kilometers landscape is one of the largest conservation areas in the world and boasts the highest diversity of hoofed animals of any conservation landscape in the world.

The Eastern Kafue Nature Alliance is a Global Development Alliance with The Nature Conservancy and private sector partners aims to improve the protection and management of wildlife, forests, and fisheries in the eastern Kafue landscape and improve the health, livelihood opportunities, and prosperity of local communities through integrated market driven approaches.

The Eastern Kafue landscape is vital to the livelihoods of local communities living in the surrounding buffer zones. However, poverty-driven threats to the rich biodiversity, combined with gaps in resource protection and management, have resulted in high poaching rates, unsustainable forest clearing, overfishing, and destructive out-of-control fires. Such ecological erosion does not only threaten the future prosperity of communities in the area, but the functioning of the whole ecosystem.

Leveraging over $11 million in private investment, the Eastern Kafue Nature Alliance works with government, private market sector actors, local non-governmental and community organizations to connect health, livelihood opportunities, and the prosperity of approximately 200,000 people to foster good natural resource management practices. In all its programs, the Eastern Kafue Nature Alliance will integrate gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.

The Eastern Kafue Nature Alliance will increase the livelihood opportunities and prosperity of local communities by supporting the Government of the Republic of Zambia and local communities to protect and sustainably manage natural resources in the Kafue Landscape. These resources, including agriculture, fisheries, eco-tourism, safari hunting and other forest-based activities provide the natural capital upon which the majority of livelihoods in the landscape are dependent.

The Eastern Kafue Nature Alliance programs will establish and train community-led anti-poaching units and support community-led development and implementation of natural resources management and land use plans to counter wildlife trafficking, forest degradation, and preserve wildlife habitats. Food security initiatives will support diversification of small-scale and subsistence crops into high-value, climate-smart crops, such as quinoa and chili, through extension and sustainable farming practices, technology transfer, and provision of market services including product offtake contracts, organic certification, and facilitation of access to third-party service providers, such as suppliers of inputs, agricultural technologies, and finance. Programs in the health sector will support nutrition, and training and equipping community health workers to improve access to health services for mothers and children. Water, sanitation, and hygiene activities will help improve sustainable access to clean drinking water.

Expected Results

• Improved capacity of the Department of National Parks and Communities to manage the Kafue National Park and the Game Management Areas.

• Increased access to maternal and child health, and water, sanitation, and hygiene services in the surrounding communities.

• Improved sustainable livelihood opportunities for community members living in the game management areas around Kafue National Park.

• Improved management of 900,000 hectares of biologically significant areas in the Kafue Landscape.

• 20,000 community members, provided with access to clean drinking water.

• Increased agricultural productivity and management of at least 20,000 hectares of agricultural land.