Kabwe Municipal Council Institutional profile

“gender equity is important.”

Kabwe is the most central town in the republic of Zambia. The town became a Center of Excellence in 2010. The Municipal council is one of the more than 160 Centres of Excellence in Zambia promoting the Southern African Development Community (SADC) protocol on gender and development. It has put in place policies and action plans with flagship programmes to end gender violence as well as promote local economic development and green municipalities.

Since the implementation of the COE programme, the council has been able to mainstream gender in addressing a number of issues which are related to less participation by women in economic activities, such as an increase in the number of reported gender based violence cases.

The council has since 2010 participated in the Gender Justice and Local Government summits; gender equity is important on the 25-27 th March in Johannesburg; Gender Links will host a summit in Lusaka, Zambia and the regional summit in Johannesburg, South Africa from 22-24.

In 2012, the focal person for theKabwe Municipal council was Mrs. Zyambo who got transferred to the Chinsali Municipal Council and was replaced by Mr. D Mapulanga who, at the time of the verification was currently on leave a development that has seen Mrs R Museteka stand in as focal point person for the council.

The gender unit for the council in the two years that it has been in existence has been able to get political buy-in from decision making levels as their activities are often reflected in the budget and the focal person is in management. Capacity building workshops have been held for policy, so to capacitate them to influence decisions at the highest level.

Councillors were invited to a meeting to enhance the civic leaders capabilities to plan and 5 wards were selected of which 3 were trained in community based planning as a pilot programme.The administration of score cards to the council along with other monitoring and evaluation tools can be used to measure z change in the immediate, medium and long term.

The last local government elections were held in 2011, and hence there has been no change from the past verification on the number of councillors and committees chaired by women. Men and women are equally benefitting from the jobs being created by the council.

The Council is currently facilitating loan schemes for women by linking them to credit providers/institutions that support women entrepreneurs. For example, the Copperbelt environmental project brought women hammer mills, and built 3 markets in Kabwe.

At least 9 wards in the council have formed community based enterprises, which are involved in waste collection door to door at a fee of k1000 per house per month. These groups were trained by the council in collaboration with a waste company based in Netherlands would be given tools in the form of loans to spearhead the collection of waste.

During the formation of these enterprises, women were encouraged to take up leadership positions and most of them are treasurers and cashiers. Another group was trained in ecological sanitation and women are also very active and also through the council partnering with other institutions a project has been funded to construct eco-san toilets.

In terms of safe public spaces for women, not all streets are clearly named. The reason for that is that street labels have been vandalised. Soon the council will embark on an exercise to replace them, but it should fit into the council’s regular budgeting process. Lighting in streets has not been sufficient and so the council in 2013 and did a budget for a sum of -K84, 131,040 has been allocated for street lighting in the district.

The Kabwe local authority has developed very good relations with partner institutions such as the Police Victim Support Unit and other police wings and fortunately for Kabwe women are heading the police force and understand the issues of GBV and how they can continue information dissemination and awareness programmes .