We must celebrate the National Diaspora Policy as a progressive move which should motivate all Zambians scattered across the globe to come back home and invest.
Lusaka – A Zambian, living in the USA, has embarked on a transformational agenda that is touching lives in a very practical manner that should not pass without comment.
Judy Kapata, on the 6th of June 2022, sent K2,500 to five winners of her Judy After 50 Years Revolving Fund Initiative. Various financial support initiatives have since been rolled out through her Facebook page.
We must celebrate the National Diaspora Policy as a progressive move which should motivate all Zambians scattered across the globe to come back home and invest.
The policy, whose objective is to integrate Zambians in the diaspora in the development agenda of the country, could not have come at a better time than this, when the country is in a hurry to attain its Vision 2030 of becoming a middle-income nation.
Also Read: We need a radical change of mindset to develop Zambia.
When you have nothing but ideas on how to make money and someone gives you a K2,500 at 0% interest rate, it’s better to consider yourself useless if you fail to put it to good use.
Someone, in the comments on the post announcing the winners, has even suggested that she changes this competition to a quarterly one giving K10,000 to a cooperative as cooperatives may exhibit better financial discipline.
Her effort has been widely praised and appreciated as it is a known fact that despite the country having a huge population in the diaspora, it has not been able to harness full dividends from them. Ordinarily, having a huge population in the diaspora should translate into benefits for the home country.
Research shows that African diaspora can be a valuable asset for exchanging knowledge, ideas, and technology that could be useful in achieving the continent’s development agenda.
As ordinary citizens, we ought to know that remittances have become a critical factor in reducing poverty in developing countries. For instance, in 2017, the diaspora contributed 27.1% of Liberia’s GDP. Nigeria has 5.6%.
Another good example is Sierra Leone, where its diaspora health workers in the UK created an association to provide annual medical support (in the form of skills, knowledge, and equipment) for the schools and hospitals where they trained or had their initial deployments.
If you have any brilliant ideas about how Judy After 50 Years can help an ordinary child in rural Zambia, feel free to leave them in the comments section. It’s our hope that other Zambians in the diaspora will emulate this noble cause.
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