General Human Development Report Zambia - 1997

The first ZDHR was produced in 1997 with Poverty as its theme. It reviewed the progress and challenges that Zambia faced during the 1990s in promoting human development, and showed that poverty was high in Zambia with nearly 70% of the population below the poverty line. The Report showed that while poverty remained pervasive in Zambia, there had been some improvement in the human condition and the level of poverty during that decade. Most noteworthy was the fact that the improvements had been greater in the rural areas than in the urban. While the poverty situation in Lusaka worsened between 1990 and 1996, it improved fairly significantly in North-Western, Eastern, Northern, Western and Southern Provinces over the same period, and moderately in the others, except Luapula Province, which remained practically the same. The challenge for the future will be the extent to which the support of community based organizations, NGOs, the private sector, donors and civil society at large can be successfully mobilized to complement the Government’s efforts to fight poverty.