Zambia Diaspora Foundation (ZADIFO) is a non-profit organization, a social enterprise entity established in 2019.
My name is Dean Mulozi, the Executive Director of Zambia Diaspora Foundation. My specific roles consist in providing a strategic direction of the organization through planning and management of the key programs of the foundation. I liaise with Zambian diaspora networks around the world, identifying their needs to collectively address them. I also carry out regular consultations with public and private sector entities on diaspora and migration issues. Finally, I make media statements related to public policy on Diaspora, migration and development.
The need to establish the Foundation was to contribute to resolving some of the challenges facing African and Zambian diaspora. The Foundation observes a lack of enabling environment at country level in many African countries that include participation of the Diaspora. Africans, including Zambia, are not using diaspora resource potential effectively to contribute to social and economic development programs. ZADIFO advocates for the timely inclusion of International and Africa Union protocols, conventions and strategic agreements for timely implementation.
The Zambian Diaspora Foundation was created to provide a national platform for diaspora policy dialogue and to advocate for policy/protocol implementation. ZADIFO works with the public and private sectors to facilitate provision of dedicated diaspora services such as access to financial and investment services. The Foundation’s main objective is to design programs that are dedicated to support and promote Zambian diaspora and migration to effectively encourage diaspora contribution to social and economic development.
The other aim of ZADIFO is to support and protect the rights of migrants and people with African descent emanating from Africa and Zambia in particular and ensure their contribution to African development. Our guiding principles include participation in national development, trust and confidence building, patriotism, empowerment, democracy, good governance and gender equality.
Within the past three years, the Foundation has had an impact on influencing diaspora services through creation of strategic partnerships with the private sector in Zambia in order to facilitate design and delivery of social and economic services. The Foundation facilitated establishments of two partnerships with the UK based financial services provider and an international Bank located in Zambia that will promote delivery of diaspora investment and financial services up to 250,000 Diaspora communities around the world. The program is designed to introduce investment finance to the Zambian Diaspora community with an estimated US$300,000,000 worth of investments within the next five to ten years. It is expected that the impact of the partnership will encourage diaspora investments and yield economic benefits to project beneficiaries.
ZADIFO decided to join ADEPT for a purpose of securing institutional capacity development support, diaspora resources knowledge sharing and networking, technical support services, research and development, and partnerships for development. We seek partnerships with European based organisations that will support the delivery of our work in Zambia and beyond.
The Foundation’s expectations as a networker is to share knowledge of in-country experiences, to contribute to the growing needs of the African diaspora by offering solutions and to conduct promotional activities on migration and diaspora governance. We also expect to secure partnerships with European diaspora networks that will influence achievement of the objectives of the national development plans, Sustainable Development Goals, Vision 2030 and Africa Union Agenda 2063.
