At the INFF Facility: Country-led dialogue on the sidelines of the 2026 FFD Forum, held on 20 April 2026 at UNHQ, Prudence Kaoma, Permanent Secretary, Planning and Administration, Ministry of Finance and National Planning, Zambia shared its experience in translating the Sevilla Commitment into country-level financing action.
The speech highlights how Zambia is using its Integrated National Financing Framework to align national planning, budgeting and financing, particularly as it moves from the 8th to the 9th National Development Plan. It points to practical steps already taken, including Development Finance Assessments, a Domestic Resource Mobilization Policy Manual and a handbook on innovative financing, while also identifying key challenges such as climate shocks, informal-sector financing, illicit financial flows and underdeveloped capital markets.
You can find the full script below:
From a country perspective, as Zambia, I would like to share our perspective on this important subject.
We want to reiterate that we are meeting at a very significant stage on the global platform, where the global financing landscape and the rules-based international order are rapidly transforming and changing. In this context, the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development last year marked a critical moment for many of us, particularly developing countries, as well as for the world at large. It reaffirmed multilateralism and provided a renewed global framework for financing development.
We note that the Sevilla Commitment now serves as a key anchor in guiding collective efforts going forward, building also on the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. We are living in a very challenging global context, with significant macroeconomic and financing challenges faced by many countries. Therefore, the full implementation of the Sevilla outcome document and its recommendations is critical for us to be able to finance our development.
Zambia had the honour to co-facilitate the negotiations of the outcome document of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, the Sevilla Commitment. We worked closely with partners and are proud to have helped shape a balanced, ambitious and forward-looking agenda, one that responds to immediate pressures and challenges, such as those we are facing this year. It also laid the foundation for the long-term reforms needed in the financing sector.
The central message from Sevilla, which we took away, is that reform of the international financial architecture must go hand in hand with strong country-led frameworks. This is one of the critical areas that we see as worthy of implementation.
The outcome document also explicitly recognized that Integrated National Financing Frameworks are a key instrument to align international support with national priorities. That is what we have seen in Zambia, having applied this framework. We have seen that it also serves as an important anchor for sustainable financing and budgeting, and strengthens development cooperation frameworks. This reflects the growing consensus that global solutions will only be effective if they are led by countries themselves, with strong ownership to ensure that the framework is applied and implemented.
Zambia is actively advancing the INFF agenda, and we are using this approach as a planning and delivery tool to finance sustainable development. Our aim is to align our INFF with our medium-term development planning framework. We are coming to the end of our 8th National Development Plan and are at the threshold of developing our next plan, the 9th National Development Plan, which will take effect from 2027 to 2031.
With this, we have undertaken a number of activities, one of them being Development Finance Assessments. We have done this at the national level and at the district level, providing an outlook on the current sustainable development financing landscape. We feel that this will help us as we craft our next National Development Plan, from the perspective of how development finance should be looked at going forward.
We have also developed a Domestic Resource Mobilization Policy Manual. This provides a structured solution to increase internal revenue collection and modernize our tax administration systems, and this is being applied as we speak.
We have also developed a handbook on innovative financing for industrialization and private sector development. This handbook has been developed to provide actionable financing solutions for structural economic transformation, with financial flows directed towards bankable projects that support the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises with limited access to collateral-based loans.
This handbook identifies and promotes the use of catalytic investment instruments, such as blended finance, credit guarantees, green bonds and sustainability-linked loans. It also has a strong focus on public-private partnerships and financial technology, including fintech and digital solutions.
Notwithstanding the efforts that we have made as a country, we have also noted that there are some challenges that we have to deal with. Among these is how we plan and allocate financing within our framework to respond to climate change impacts. Zambia is one country that has been significantly affected by this. We experienced a very debilitating drought over the past two years, which affected our energy production and water systems.
We see this as something that we need to look at critically in our INFF, so that we can determine how some of these risks can be programmed and planned for within the framework.
We are also looking at how the framework can tackle micro-level issues. In the case of developing countries with a large informal sector, how do we make provisions for effectively planning how finances are mobilized to address some of these challenges?
We are also a resource-rich country, with a high potential for illicit financial flows. So we are looking at how the framework can also deal with this in terms of planning. We have developed certain strategies to curb illicit financial flows, but the question is how we harness the reduction of these flows so that these resources can be directed inward to support development.
We are also looking at how we deal with underdeveloped capital markets, which is an issue for most developing countries, including Zambia. How do we provide strategies in our INFF to address this, so that we can bring in the resources required for development from this subsector as well?
As a country, we are looking forward to formulating a financing strategy that will be informed by the results of our Development Finance Assessment, which started earlier and is now almost concluding, while taking into account some of the issues that I have highlighted.
This would result in better integration of national planning and budgeting processes, alignment of policy and regulatory frameworks, and stronger responses to some of the shocks that the country is facing, which require significant financing for us to respond effectively.
We are also looking at how best we can position ourselves in our engagement with private financiers, so that blended financing options are clearly mapped in terms of the flows that we expect from them.
With strengthened macroprudential management, we hope that we can do this effectively, because we are implementing a number of reforms to get the country back onto the path of growth and to mobilize resources from the various sources that we have outlined in our manual.
Our intention is to finalize our INFF and develop our 9th National Development Plan anchored on it, so that the two work in alignment.
In closing, allow me to underscore that delivering on the Sevilla Commitment for Zambia and other developing countries depends on our collective ability to translate these global ambitions into country-level implementation, such as the areas I have highlighted.
In this context, we feel that country-led dialogues are a timely and important platform to elevate country voices and leadership, share practical experiences in implementing financing strategies, and strengthen alignment between global commitments and national action.
Zambia looks forward to contributing to this exchange, as we have done, and we remain engaged in the next framework for 2027 to 2031, to see how we can anchor our ideas into that.
I thank you.
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