Ndola City Council Institutional Profile

“Ndola is the third largest city 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.”

Ndola is the third largest city 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 with policies and action plans, with flagship programmes to end gender based violence as well as promote local economic development and green municipalities.
The council has an action plan on Gender, and each year commemorates the International Women’s day. There is a high-level gender champion who is part of the town council management. The Gender Action Plan and GBV action plan have been adopted at council level. A GBV subcommittee at the district level has also been set up.
Women are still underrepresented in political decision making, with the number of women councillors having gone up by 2 since the last verification when women only made up 4 of the 36 members of the committee. Both the mayor and his deputy are male and all committees are chaired by men.
Although the is a very low representation of women in the council, the few who are there have made meaningful contributions and pushed for gender mainstreaming in the council and hence the adoption of the action plan on Gender. The town clerk is female and this helped in getting gender on the agenda of the town.
Men and women equally participate in public meetings. However, in most cases women are in the fore front when it comes to public meetings and make more contributions. Examples of meeting held include community meetings to discuss rates and other issues affecting the community.

The town has places designed for market places as a means of elevating the economic status of women. A number of women have benefited from the scheme.
On land issues, the council is guided by the national policy which stipulates that 30% of all land and houses should be allocated to women. Although women are consulted on climate change issues there is currently no stand-alone policy on the subject and no audit on the beneficiaries has been carried out so far.
Football and netball facilities have been built for both men and women, although currently there is no sex disaggregated data on the use of the facilities.
All streets are named, although none of them are named after women. While there have been efforts to light all streets, lack of resources have resulted in some parts of the town being without any street lightning.
During the 16 Days of Activism, the council funded K 2,800,000.00 for Take Back the Night in partnership with GL and also collaborated with other stakeholders to sensitise the public on GBV. However, such events are still mostly dominated by women and there are plans to get more men interested in taking part in such activities.

The council is headed by a female Chief Executive Officer, and out of its 52 employees 22 are women; two women are in non-traditional positions. All vacancies in the council are advertised, and both women and men are given equal opportunities to apply. Yet there are only three women in management positions and seven men.
There is currently no policy on sexual harassment and no cases of sexual harassment have been taken up. The committee on gender is headed by a gender focal person who currently is Judith Sinkala.
There is no M and E system in place yet, but there are plans to engage Gender Links for the council to come up with its own tailor made system to monitor progress.
One of the members of the community who was interviewed by Gender Links said she was not active on gender issues before, but now he has learnt a lot about gender and can confidently talk about the subject. “This knowledge has helped me reach out to more people as I am now fully aware of gender and women’s issues. Because of GL the council is planning on introducing more programmes that will enable people to consult them on cross cutting issues such as gender and land inheritance,” said Jane Malambo.