Speeches Shim
Supporting children to not just survive, but to thrive, is a priority for USAID Zambia’s Health Office. Over the past two decades, Zambia has made tremendous progress in reducing under-five mortality, with a reduction from 197 to 61 deaths per 1,000 live births between 1996 and 2018. The first five years of a child’s life are critical for healthy long-term development, productivity, and social cohesion.
With a rich democratic history, Zambia is well-placed to build citizen-responsive systems of governance that advance the nation’s development priorities and reduce donor dependency. Through USAID’s support to the Human Rights Commission, the United States works with Zambia to combat corruption, strengthen government systems, protect human rights, and promote productive civic engagement. USAID/Zambia assistance promotes legal and procedural reforms that strengthen the case-management capacity of the Commission.
A key condition of Zambia’s World Trade Organization Trade Facilitation Agreement (WTO-TFA), the portal fulfills the government’s requirement to host up-to-date trade-related information—such as permits, forms, border procedures, current fees and charges, and exchange rates—for traders seeking to import to, or export from, Zambia. The portal aims to expedite compliance of traders with regulatory requirements, while lowering their transaction costs, thereby improving their competitiveness. It will also assist the Zambian government to remain compliant with a key WTO membership obligation.
This is a key milestone—not only for the Ministry of Commerce, Trade, and Industry—but also for Zambia and the entire Southern Africa region. This new portal has the potential to significantly improve the flow of information, automate trade procedures, improve risk-management processes, and boost the overall performance of border-control agencies.
The ZDHS also serves as a vital source of data used by USAID, international and national stakeholders, non-governmental organizations, and other partners to guide our programming and help to measure the impact of our collective investments in Zambia’s health sector.
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