Constituency Development Fund Issues Brief

The Constituency Development Fund (CDF) is provided for in Article 162 of the Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Act No. 2 of 2016 and is operationalized by the Constituency Development Fund Act No. 11 of 2018. The provisions in these two pieces of legislation provide the legal framework for CDF in collaboration with other laws such as the Local Government Act No. 2 of 2019, the National Planning and Budgeting Act No. 1 of 2020, the Public Finance Management Act No. 1 of 2018 and the Public Procurement Act No. 8 of 2020 and now the Constituency Development Fund Guidelines as launched by the Hon. Minister of Local Government and Rural Development in February, 2022, etc.
CDF was originally introduced in Zambia in 1995 as a means to encourage local development in rural and urban communities across the country (Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, 2022). Guidelines were developed for the utilization of CDF, the latest prior to the current ones having been produced in 2006. The original scope of the CDF was to cover local projects at the community level with the 2021 allocation for CDF amounting to K1.6m per constituency (Zambia National Assembly, 2021).
The initiative was, however, plagued by a number of challenges that rendered it ineffective at worst and with limited developmental impact at best. Some of these challenges include inconsistent disbursement meaning that communities could not predict the flow of CDF in order to execute effective planning and implementation of projects for the benefit of citizens. Another significant challenge was the size of the fund which limited the scale and number of projects that could be undertaken in comparison to the development needs prevalent in the communities. Other challenges included the lack of effective citizen participation through monitoring and evaluation and lack of accountability for the fund by local authorities as shown in past reports of the Auditor General on Local Authorities.
In the 2022 Zambia National Budget, CDF saw an unprecedented increase in the size of funding and scope of its mandate. For the year 2022, CDF has been increased from K1.6 to K25.7 million per constituency while being expanded to include additional components such as youth and women empowerment programs as well as secondary school bursaries that will now be locally administered (Zambia National Assembly, 2021).
Essentially, the newly revamped CDF for 2022 seeks to address the fiscal gaps in the drive for decentralization which has long been cited as a key component missing from earlier efforts. Government has also since produced revised guidelines for the administration of CDF (Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, 2022). Despite the revised guidelines in place for managing the expanded scope of CDF, there remain concerns regarding corruption vulnerabilities and capacity of key stakeholders that will need to be addressed in order for the new CDF to be a success and adequately uplift the lives of communities and bring local development as envisaged.
This issues paper seeks to analyze the new 2022 CDF guidelines in comparison to the current Act, draw out the corruption vulnerabilities that are of concern regarding the newly constituted CDF, highlight the implications of the changes that have occurred with the CDF and provide recommendations to government and relevant stakeholders

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