Zambia’s Katete Universal Pension

In “If you only have dust in your hands then friends are far; when they are full they come closer”: An Examination of the impacts of Zambia’s Katete universal pension, Sarina Kidd discusses the impacts of a pilot pension scheme in Katete, Zambia. She shows how it has empowered older persons, enabling them to maintain their self-worth and helped to address their social exclusion by re-integrating them into their kinship and wider social networks.

Sarina argues that, since the vast majority of older people in Zambia live in poverty, a move towards a universal pension – based on the Katete model – would be ideal. This would follow a current trend in Eastern and Southern Africa, which has seen several countries such as Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and Tanzania (in Zanzibar) implementing old age pensions.