Bruce Mwale

The National Aids Council – NAC has called for increased local funding towards the fight against HIV and Aids. NAC Director Policy and Planning John Mwale says as much as foreign funding is appreciated there is need for more domestic funding toward the agenda. He was speaking at the ZAMCOM Science Café on Local Funding for HIV Prevention in Zambia. Mr. Mwale was quick to note that a lot strides have been made in the past three decades in as far the fight against the pandemic. “We have reduced the HIV prevalence from 15.5 percent in 2001 to about 11.6 percent in 2016, and in terms of incidence we have reduced from 85,000 new infections in 2006 to 46 thousand new infections in 2016,” Mr Mwale said. He said for Zambia to meet its aspiration of achieving a free HIV/ Aids generation by 2030 will be dependant partly to the available resources towards the health sector and specifically the HIV fight. Over 480 million dollars is needed in the HIV response for the 2017-2018 timefra

Inadequate levels of power generation in the Common Market for East and Southern Africa - COMESA region, remains the main challenge in meeting the energy needs of the region. COMESA Director of Infrastructure and Logistics, Jean Baptiste Mutabazi made the revelations at the launch of the latest report on the Least Developed Countries - LDC in Lusaka today. Mr. Mutabazi says this has been compounded by low coverage of transmission and distribution infrastructure due to insufficient investment in the energy sector. "As of today, the entire installed generation capacity the COMESA , which has a population of about 420 million people, is estimated to be about 68, 000 megawatts. This figure is very low compared to some countries such as France with a population of about 65 million (more than six ties less) and an estimated power generation capacity of about 1200, 000 megawatts. This underscores the absolute and urgent need in Africa in general and the COMESA region in partic