Many of Zambia’s poorest and most isolated communities live and farm around the floodplains in Western Province. Recurrent droughts and a lack of off-farm employment opportunities have entenched poverty and encouraged steady outmigration.
Cash-for-work labour-intensive public works programmes were introduced to three districts of Western Province as a response to drought in 1994/5. Two objectives were pursued simultaneously: to transfer income to vulnerable households and protect their access to food; and to upgrade roads that would link isolated districts with other provinces, reducing transport costs, facilitating market integration and enhancing provincial food security.
The cash-for-work programme was implemented by different agencies in each of the three districts where it was operational from 1995 to 1997 (see Map 6.1). One consequence was that key aspects of programme design differed substantively across the three study areas. Perhaps most importantly, job rotation in one district (Lukulu) severely limited the value of the resources transferred by the programme to participating households, while in another district (Kalabo) participants enjoyed continuous employment for over a year, and many accumulated substantial cash incomes and sizeable assets as a result. Because the impact and allocation of the income transfer on individual households was closely related to its value, inter-district comparisons are most revealing for this reason.
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