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Britain’s Development Bank Puts $65 million Into Zambia and Zimbabwe
Business & Innovation

Britain’s Development Bank Puts $65 million Into Zambia and Zimbabwe

By NG Editor·

British International Investment has put $65 million to work in two markets that still struggle to borrow long. Zambia gets $15 million. Zimbabwe gets $50 million. The split tells you what BII thinks each system can absorb.

In Lusaka, the money is an anchor ticket in Zanaco’s planned $100 million sustainability-bond programme — billed as the first sustainability bond issued by a Zambian bank. Proceeds are meant for climate-resilient farming, renewable energy, small firms, women-owned businesses and social infrastructure. BII has been helping Zanaco build the framework since 2023. The point of an anchor is not only cash. It is a signal to local asset managers that the paper is worth a look. About 40 percent of the programme is expected to come from investors who are not development-finance institutions. That is the test. If pension funds and insurers stay away, it is another DFI club deal. If they buy, Zambia has a new instrument.

In Harare, the structure is older and more direct. CABS and NMB Bank will receive a combined $50 million under BII’s Zimbabwe Agriculture Finance Programme: term loans plus trade finance. The target borrowers are farms and processors that can export or expand but cannot get three- or four-year money. CABS is in line for $30 million, including a $20 million term loan and a planned $10 million trade line. NMB is in line for $20 million, split between lending and trade finance. Technical help on environmental and climate risk sits alongside the money.

Chris Chijiutomi, BII’s head of Africa, framed the package as a way to lengthen tenor, thicken local markets and let firms invest and trade. Kirsty McNeill, the UK’s development minister, tied it to private capital, climate agriculture and women-owned firms. The language is familiar. The balance-sheet effect is simpler: two banking systems get longer money than they can raise easily on their own.

Zambia also gets Horizon Zambia, a technical-assistance track that grew out of a 2025 pilot with 15 small firms and $8 million of facilitated investment. BII is running similar work in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nepal. It is the unglamorous half of development finance: making companies readable to investors.

None of this settles Zambia’s copper cycle or Zimbabwe’s credit history. It does move two practical bottlenecks. Lusaka needs a domestic sustainability market that is not only donor-labelled. Harare’s farms need letters of credit and machinery loans that last longer than a season. $65 million will not rebuild either economy. Used tightly, it can prove a structure that others can copy.

Watch two things. First, who buys the Zanaco bond besides BII. Second, whether CABS and NMB actually push the new lines into farms and processors, or park them in safer corporate names. The press release is the easy part. The loan tape is the story.