2). Consequently, the attainment of the developmental aspirations elaborated in various national Visions which themselves are aligned to Agenda 2063 and Agenda 2030 remain distant. In Zambia, for example, although the country recorded steady economic growth during the period 1990-2015, poverty trends show that overall income poverty prevalence was reduced between 1991 and 2015 by 24.6 percent but increased in the late 1990s. Poverty reduction was more signi cant in urban areas, where it declined by 25.6 percent, from 49 percent in 1991 to 23.4 percent in 2015. On the other hand, income poverty in rural areas decreased from 88 percent to 76.6 percent during the same period(7 th National Development Plan, 2018). Similarly, the percentage distribution of the population by level of poverty in 2015 showed that 40.8 percent of the population was extremely poor while 13.6 percent was moderately poor. e proportion of the non-poor was 45.6 percent. With an estimated population of 15.9 million in 2015, almost half or 8.5 million people lived in poverty, with 3.5 million(22 percent) of those living in extreme poverty. It is clear therefore that, overall, economic growth did not translate into signi cant poverty reduction, especially in rural areas due to the capital-intensive nature of the sources of growth of construction, mining and transport, the geographical distribution of growth skewed towards urban areas and concentration in labour­intensive agriculture sector. As Table 2 shows, inequality and unemployment remain high in the region. 183 Oliver Maponga