Women’s group, WEAC, World-Wide Fund collaborate to fight unemployment in Zambia

Women’s Entrepreneurship Access Centre (WEAC) and World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have signed an agreement to identify and accelerate enterprise development in Zambia.

The two parties have been prompted to enter the partnership to assist deal with the high unemployment rate in the country, says WWF country director Nachilala Nkombo.

Nkombo said Zambia potentially sat on an explosive youth unemployment crisis and that the partnership had the potential to help address the challenge.

Through the partnership, she said, the parties also wanted to see enterprises receive tailor made experience-based education and resources delivered to deal with specific to start scaling up in various location including rural areas.

She said this in a speech read for her by Zambia Acting Chief Conservation Officer, Moses Nyirenda on Friday evening.

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“Because of the high statistics of youth unemployment rate we thought it wise to come together to sign an MoU. Some of the objectives of the MoU are to provide linkage to potential markets to business development services and access to finance in a supportive environment to help women and youth led businesses to succeed.

“Other objectives are offer mentor driven programmes to help businesses to adopt sustainable business models, access tools and resources that expose them to scale up their business models while helping them to transition from the informal to formal sector,” Nkombo said.

She said the partnership would also support green and sustainable solutions which are based on science.

Through the MoU, she said, the two would build a pipeline of bankable projects that not only generated financial returns but also protected the environment.

“Our collaboration will help Zambia reach vision 2030 goal of becoming a peaceful, inclusive and resilient country,” Nkombo said.

WEAC Executive Director, Nambula Kachumi, said the MoU was important in mitigating the effects of climate change and help enterprises grow thus, contribute to the development of the economy.

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