Overview
Issued by the Ministry of Community Development, Mother and Child Health, the National Social Protection Policy provides a coordinated approach to addressing poverty and vulnerability in Zambia. It adopts a transformative framework combining protective, preventive, promotive, and transformative interventions, organized into four pillars: Social Assistance; Social Security and Social Health Insurance; Livelihood and Empowerment; and Protection, with disability mainstreamed across all areas. The policy sets objectives to reduce extreme poverty, enhance food and nutrition security, build human capital, extend social security coverage (including to the informal sector), promote sustainable livelihoods, and protect vulnerable populations from abuse and exploitation. It details measures such as regular cash and in-kind transfers, pension reforms, universal social health insurance, skills training, access to finance, and legal protection mechanisms. An implementation framework establishes a National Coordination Unit at Cabinet Office, assigns roles to multiple ministries and agencies, and provides for resource mobilization, monitoring and evaluation, and a legal reform agenda including a proposed Social Protection Act. The document includes a national implementation plan with outputs, targets, timelines, and indicative costs.