National Export Strategy (NEST).

This National Export Strategy (NEST) is a comprehensive blueprint to bolster Zambia's export performance and align with the Vision 2030 objective of achieving middle-income status. Its primary goal is to boost the competitiveness of Zambia's exports regionally and internationally while fostering opportunities for expanding its productive capacity. Covering both goods and services, the NEST outlines a strategic roadmap to fundamentally transform and broaden Zambia's export portfolio, thereby enhancing overall sector competitiveness, with a focus on sustainable and inclusive socio-economic growth. Key objectives include diversifying products and markets, adding value, and improving productivity at the firm level, along with increasing the contribution of non-traditional exports to overall earnings. As part of the broader national effort to diversify the economy and stimulate sustainable development through job creation and income generation, the NEST aims to address challenges across goods and services sectors in a coordinated manner. To achieve this, it identifies strategic thematic areas and proposes interventions to overcome obstacles related to market expansion, trade facilitation, production, access to finance, and broader wealth and job creation goals. These thematic areas are as follows (i) Policy and Regulatory Environment: Creation of an enabling policy environment that supports and sustains export development; (ii) Product development: Developing new products and improving existing ones; (iii) Trade Support Network: Building capacity and enhancing coordination of trade support network to ensure that the network is responsive to the needs of the export sector; (iv) Market Penetration and Development: Securing of markets and supporting penetration of key identified products and services in these markets; (v) Trade Facilitation: Addressing trade facilitation-related constraints to improve the flow of goods and services.
To enhance the export sector’s contribution to Zambian’s socio-economic development, which is the overall objective of the Policy, the document lays down the following Specific Objectives (i) diversify the range of exportable products and enhance value addition in them; (ii) take full advantage of existing markets and identify and develop new markets; (iii) promote sustainable growth at firm level through addressing the existing and potential new threats to production and exports; (iv) enhance the contribution of the non-traditional export sector to job and wealth creation and export revenue generation.
The strategies outlined to achieve the target encompass the following actions (i) providing incentives to the private sector to expand accommodation capacity for tourists across all segments, while also enhancing tourist support facilities and rest areas; (ii) revitalizing tourism training programs to elevate the quality of services within the sector; (iii) encouraging export diversification through innovative initiatives and linkage programs to promote a wider array of export products; (iv) strengthening industry players' capacity through incentives and training opportunities; (v) supporting compliance with laws governing folklore and intangible heritage; (vi) promoting the mass production of local content to bolster production levels and competitiveness. In terms of trade in goods, the focus areas include (i) primary agriculture, particularly cereals, legumes, cotton, and related products; (ii) the horticultural, floricultural, and animal products sub-sector; (iii) agro-processing, with a specific emphasis on the food sub-sector; (iv) the textiles industry; (v) the leather and leather products sector; (vi) the wood and wood products industry; (vii) building materials; (viii) engineering products; (ix) non-metallic minerals and gemstones.