In Kemet, the river kept the accounts.Every year, when the star Sopdet rose before dawn, the Iteru began to swell. At Abu, on the island below the cataracts, priests descended a stone stairway into the water to read the marks cut into its walls.The instrument was called the Nilometer.It did not measure the river's beauty. It measured its promise.A high flood meant black silt on the fields, full granaries and a prosperous harvest. A low flood meant cracked earth, thin cattle and less grain to collect. The fortunes of the kingdom, and the revenues of its treasury, depended on the water.That was the oldest rule in Kemet:You assess the harvest by the river, not by the hopes of the treasury. <h2>The Dream</h2>That year, Pharaoh dreamed.He stood on the riverbank and watched seven fat cows emerge from the water to graze among the reeds. Behind them came seven lean cows, their ribs showing like the ridges of a dry field.He awoke troubled and summoned the Priests of the Sky.They no longer needed a prisoner to interpret dreams. They had instruments, rainfall records and generations of observations."The fat cows have already come, Great House," they said. "The granaries are fuller than in living memory. The Overseer of the Granaries planned to purchase one million measures of grain this year. He bought 2,743,393.""And the lean cows?""They are the Child of the Warm Sea. When the distant waters grow warm, the rains of Kemet fail. The Child comes next season."At the beginning of the year, the court had promised a six-cubit flood. The previous year's mark had been 5.3. But the priests had returned from Abu with a different reading.NILOMETER: 4.9 CUBITS.Lower than last year. Lower than promised.Not a famine. But no longer a feast. <h2>The Scroll of the Two Treasuries</h2>Pharaoh summoned his court to hear the scroll for the coming year.It was read by Nebamun, Overseer of the Two Treasuries, a careful man who had spent years untangling the debts of an earlier reign.The scroll bore the title:Grow Kemet: From Stabilisation to Unlocking Opportunities, Creating Work and Improving Livelihoods for All.It was the largest scroll ever read in the hall: 284.8 billion deben, an eighth more than the year before.And much of it was good news.When the previous reign defaulted, merchants from across the Great Green had come to collect. At the worst point, 45 of every 100 deben the court spent went towards servicing its debts.Now the figure stood at 23.7 of every 100.Not long ago, Kemet could finance barely three-fifths of its own expenditure. Now 82 of every 100 deben would come from its own fields, mines and markets.The tax-gatherers had collected 98, then 104, then 101 parts of every hundred they were asked to deliver. The deficit, which had swollen to 5.9 parts in the year now ending, was to fall to three.The courtiers applauded. They were right to.Then Nebamun read the tax assessment.The applause stopped.Company tax: from 30.1 billion to 42.7 billion deben. An increase of almost two-fifths.The tax on wages: up by a tenth.The tax on every sale in the market: from 16 parts in every hundred to 16 and a half.An old scribe at the back leaned towards his neighbour."The Nilometer says the river is lower," he whispered. "Yet the scroll expects a larger harvest of taxes. One of them is wrong.""Or perhaps both can be true," replied his neighbour. "The mines are deep, and copper does not care about rain."The old scribe was not convinced. He remembered another scroll. <h2>The Seer from Beyond the River</h2>Word of the new scroll crossed the Great Green and reached the counting houses of the bondholders.They had been burned once. They had no intention of being burned again.So they summoned Bilamun, a seer from beyond the river who read treasuries as priests read entrails. They paid him handsomely and gave him a simple instruction."Go to Kemet. Curse the scroll. Tell the world its numbers are sand."Bilamun mounted his she-donkey and travelled to a high place overlooking Pharaoh's treasury. He opened his mouth to curse.He blessed instead."How shall I curse what the gods have not cursed?" he said. "The old debts have been restructured. The tax-gatherers deliver what they promise. The granaries are full."He tried again from a second high place."The dole for the poorest households rises by more than a third, to 10.36 billion deben, reaching more than 1.6 million households. And Kemet now finances almost all of it from its own treasury. The foreign donors once gave 910 million; now they give 129 million. Pharaoh's contribution rises from 6.7 billion to 10.2 billion."From a third high place, he continued:"A new house of skills has been built, and the trades receive 852.7 million deben, three-fifths more than last year. The constituency councils receive 9.05 billion, nearly half as much again. Pharaoh has even insured the land against drought."The bondholders' messengers tore their robes."We paid you to curse!""I can only speak what I see," replied Bilamun.But on the road home, his donkey stopped. <h2>The Donkey Sees</h2>The first time, she stopped at the stairway of the Nilometer and refused to pass.Bilamun struck her. He could not see what she saw: a sword standing in the water at the 4.9-cubit mark, where a lower flood met a higher tax assessment.The second time, she stopped beside a storehouse. Its door stood open. Inside, there was nothing.It had once held the Food Security Pack: seed and fertiliser worth 1.51 billion deben, intended for 320,000 poor farmers.The new scroll contained no allocation for it.Perhaps the seed had been moved to another storehouse. Perhaps not. The scroll did not say.Next door stood the great storehouse of farm inputs. It contained 9.04 billion deben, slightly less than the previous year. Once rising prices were considered, it would buy even less.The third time, the donkey lay down before a granary whose doors were sealed.Bilamun beat her again. This time, the donkey spoke."Am I not the one who carries the load?" she asked. "I carry the wage tax and the market tax. I carry the grain to the granary. And I know what the scribes do not always say aloud."Last year, of every hundred deben the court promised, only 86 reached the road. Of every hundred promised for building, only 72 were spent."And 67 billion deben owed to Pharaoh sit uncollected in the books. Almost exactly what he pays his creditors in a year."ARREARS: 67.0. DEBT SERVICE: 67.6."A full granary feeds no one," said the donkey, "if the door stays shut."Then Bilamun saw the sword. <h2>The Petition of Khunanup</h2>The following morning, a peasant appeared at the palace gate.His name was Khunanup, of the Salt Field. Every scribe knew the type: upright, stubborn and unfortunately eloquent.He had paid every due Pharaoh had ever demanded. During the last great drought, he lost his maize, his goats and most of his savings. Still, he paid.He had not come to curse Pharaoh. He had come to be heard.Three scribes from the Treasury were sent to receive his petition.The first was the Scribe of Taxes."The scroll is fair," he said. "Anyone earning 20,000 deben or less pays not one grain more than last year. Only the rich are asked for more.""Not one grain more than last year?" Khunanup replied. "My son earns 10,000 deben in the city. In the reign of the old measures, that wage paid no tax. Today he pays 13 of every 100. The bands do not move, but prices do. He pays more each year simply for standing still."The second was the Scribe of Granaries."Pharaoh has not forgotten the poor," he said. "The dole rises by more than a third.""I am grateful," Khunanup replied, and he meant it. "But the dole is for households that cannot work. I can work. I am a farmer. I do not want a dole; I want seed."The seed pack is gone from the scroll, and the farm inputs are no larger than last year. In a drought year, seed is what separates a lean season from one we can survive."The third was the Scribe of Accounts."Your daughter can study," he said. "Pharaoh has built an entire new house of skills.""He has," Khunanup replied. "There are 1.95 billion deben for loans to scholars at the great universities, and 1.4 million for bursaries at the trades schools. My daughter wants to become an electrician. Kemet needs electricians. Yet her line in the scroll is less than a thousandth the size of the scholars' allocation."The scribes exchanged glances.They had answers, as scribes always do. The constituency councils also offered bursaries. The skills fund was substantial. The new house was only in its first year.All of it was true.Khunanup bowed."I do not say the scroll is wicked," he said. "I say it was written in a fat year, and it will be read in a lean one." <h2>What Zaphenath-Paneah Knew</h2>That night, Pharaoh sent for the oldest scroll in the royal archive.It contained the counsel of Zaphenath-Paneah, the foreign-born vizier who had once interpreted another Pharaoh's dream of fat cows and lean ones.His advice had been simple.In the years of plenty, take a fifth of the harvest and store it. When the years of want arrive, open the granaries.Pharaoh read it twice.His Kemet had performed the first part well. The granaries were full. More than 2.7 million measures of grain had been purchased, and 9.57 billion deben had been set aside to operate the granary agency and pay for what it had already bought.But Zaphenath-Paneah had raised his levy during the fat years, not the lean. And he had opened the granaries to those who needed them, not only those whose names already appeared on a list.Pharaoh read further, beyond the passage most courtiers remembered.The old scroll recorded what happened when the lean years persisted. First, the people spent their silver. Then they sold their cattle, then their land, and finally themselves, until all of Kemet belonged to the throne.The granary had saved them. It had also come to own them.It was not simply a story about cruelty. It was a story about timing.Relief that arrives early is a safety net. Relief that arrives late becomes a debt. <h2>The Rising</h2>In the season of Akhet, the priests descended the stairway at Abu once more.The river had begun to rise. No one yet knew how far.The scroll would go before the Assembly, where representatives of the nomes would debate it line by line, as they should.Bilamun had blessed it. His donkey had warned against it. Khunanup had asked only that it be judged in the season in which it would be lived.Both could be true.A budget can restore confidence in the treasury and still leave a farmer without seed. It can improve the debt position while failing to collect billions owed to the state. It can promise more revenue without necessarily creating the economic activity needed to sustain it.Pharaoh could raise the tax. He could fill the granaries. He could even insure the land.But the question remained: would the harvest be sufficient to deliver what the scroll promised?Pharaoh stood at the top of the stairway and watched the water creep towards the 4.9-cubit mark.In Kemet, the river kept the accounts.Pharaoh only kept the scroll. <h2>Behind the fable</h2>The story is an allegorical reading of Zambia's 2027 National Budget.Kemet represents Zambia; Pharaoh represents the Government; Nebamun, Overseer of the Two Treasuries, represents the Minister of Finance and National Planning; Grow Kemet represents the Grow Zambia Agenda; and the Assembly represents the National Assembly.One deben represents one kwacha.<h3>The Nilometer and the harvest</h3><ul><li>4.9 cubits: The 2027 GDP growth forecast of 4.9%, against 6% previously projected. The 2026 growth projection is 5.3%.</li><li>The Child of the Warm Sea: El Niño and the anticipated drought during the 2026/2027 rainy season.</li><li>The fat cows: The Food Reserve Agency purchased 2,743,393 tonnes of maize by June 2026, against a target of one million tonnes. The National Food Reserves allocation rises from K2.22 billion to K9.57 billion.</li></ul><h3>The tax assessment</h3><ul><li>Company income tax: K30.06 billion to K42.70 billion, with mining contributing K23.3 billion.</li><li>PAYE: K31.78 billion to K35.37 billion.</li><li>VAT: 16% to 16.5%.</li></ul><h3>Bilamun's blessings</h3><ul><li>Debt service falls from 45.5% of expenditure in 2022 to 23.7%.</li><li>Domestic revenue rises from 58.7% of the Budget in 2021 to 82.1%.</li><li>ZRA collected 98%, 104% and 101% of its targets between 2023 and 2025.</li><li>The fiscal deficit is projected to fall from 5.9% to 3% of GDP.</li><li>Social Cash Transfer rises from K7.65 billion to K10.36 billion, targeting 1,639,034 households.</li><li>Skills Development allocation rises from K531.9 million to K852.7 million.</li><li>Constituency Development Fund rises from K6.25 billion to K9.05 billion.</li><li>Government allocates K21.5 million for drought insurance premiums.</li></ul><h3>The donkey's warnings</h3><ul><li>Food Security Pack: K1.51 billion for 320,000 beneficiaries in 2026, with no allocation identified in the 2027 Budget.</li><li>Farmer Input Support Programme: K9.15 billion to K9.04 billion.</li><li>FY2025 expenditure execution: 86% of the final budget was paid; capital expenditure execution was 72%.</li><li>K67 billion in tax arrears recorded by the Auditor-General, against K67.6 billion in annual debt service.</li></ul><h3>Khunanup's petition</h3><ul><li>PAYE bands remain unchanged for salaries of K20,000 or less.</li><li>A K10,000 salary, expressed in 2027 prices, paid no PAYE in 2014 but faces an effective PAYE rate of 13.3% in 2027.</li><li>Social Cash Transfer targets incapacitated households.</li><li>TEVET bursaries: K1.4 million, against K1.95 billion for student loans and scholarships.</li></ul><h3>The historical references</h3><ul><li>Khunanup: The protagonist of the Middle Kingdom Egyptian text Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, adapted here as a petitioner.</li><li>Bilamun: An allusion to Balaam in Numbers 22–24.</li><li>Zaphenath-Paneah: Joseph's Egyptian name in Genesis 41:45. The advice to store grain appears in Genesis 41:34–36; the subsequent famine and its consequences are described in Genesis 47:13–21.</li><li>Nebamun: A historical Egyptian name associated with scribal and administrative traditions.</li></ul>Sources: KSJ Budget Analysis: The 2027 Budget (8 November 2026); Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure 2027 (Yellow Book), Heads 19, 20, 45, 49, 52 and 89, and revenue estimates; Reuters and Bloomberg reporting on the 2027 growth forecast (October–November 2026).

The Nilometer

&nbsp;As farmers prepare for the 2026/27 season, they are being urged to leave crop residues on their fields rather than burn them.SeedCo Zambia Product Development Manager Katowando Chawinga said retaining stubble can create a natural mulch that helps soil hold moisture during periods of low rainfall.For farmers, the issue is practical. Once crop residues are burned, the soil is left more exposed to heat and drying. Leaving the material on the field provides ground cover while it gradually breaks down.The advice comes as farmers prepare for a season in which rainfall patterns and dry spells could put additional pressure on crops.For smallholders, moisture conservation can be as important as rainfall itself. A field that receives rain but quickly loses that moisture can still face stress when the next rains are delayed.The choice to leave residues behind is therefore more than a question of field clearing.In a season of uncertain rainfall, what stays on the soil may matter almost as much as what falls from the sky.

Farmers Urged to Leave Crop Residues as El Niño Risk Looms

There is something almost philosophical about El Niño.The name comes from the Spanish El Niño, meaning “the boy,” and historically referred to the appearance of unusually warm waters along the Pacific coast of Peru and Ecuador around Christmas — El Niño de Navidad, the Christ Child. Long before satellites, ocean buoys and sophisticated climate models, fishermen had already noticed that the ocean was capable of changing its behaviour and, with it, their livelihoods.There is an important lesson in that history.Nature often gives signals before it gives consequences.The challenge for societies is learning how to listen.For Zambia, this may matter again.A statistical and machine-learning forecasting system I have been developing using historical Oceanic Niño Index data from 1950 to 2026 has identified a very strong El Niño signal emerging in 2026.The latest observation in the model is June 2026. The recorded ocean temperature anomaly is +1.50°C, and the system classifies the current ENSO state as El Niño.More importantly, the historical series shows that the threshold was crossed around March 2026.The question is therefore no longer simply whether an El Niño signal exists.The more important question is:What should Zambia do with the information? <h2>The lesson of Pharaoh and Joseph</h2>There is an old story that offers a surprisingly modern way of thinking about this.In Genesis, Pharaoh dreams of seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine. Joseph interprets the dream and recommends something remarkably practical: during the years of abundance, Egypt should save enough resources to survive the years of scarcity.Whether one approaches the story as theology, history, literature or economics, the underlying principle is powerful.A forecast is valuable not because it predicts the future perfectly, but because it gives society time to prepare for an uncertain future.That is precisely how we should think about El Niño.The objective should not be to claim that we can predict exactly how much rain Lusaka, Chipata or Choma will receive.Climate systems are considerably more complicated than that.The objective is to identify a sufficiently strong signal early enough to allow farmers, businesses, financial institutions and government to make better decisions.And right now, the signal deserves attention. <h2>The strange history of El Niño</h2>Looking through the historical ENSO record produces another interesting observation.The El Niño episodes identified in the historical series include years such as:1972, 1982, 1987, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1997, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2015, 2018 and 2023.At first glance, there appears to be something resembling a rhythm.1972 to 1982: 10 years1982 to 1987: 5 years1987 to 1991: 4 years1991 to 1992: 1 year1992 to 1995: 3 years1995 to 1997: 2 years1997 to 2002: 5 years2002 to 2004: 2 years2004 to 2006: 2 years2006 to 2009: 3 years2009 to 2015: 6 years2015 to 2018: 3 years2018 to 2023: 5 yearsIt is tempting to conclude that the cycle is getting shorter.But that would go beyond what the data can support.ENSO does not operate like a clock. Scientists generally describe El Niño and La Niña as irregular phenomena, with events commonly recurring every two to seven years rather than according to a fixed timetable.The more interesting observation is therefore not that the cycle is mechanically shortening.It is that the intervals can cluster remarkably closely.Nature appears to have memory without necessarily having a schedule.That is precisely the kind of problem for which statistical modelling becomes useful. <h2>What does the model say about 2026?</h2>The forecasting system does not rely on a single technique.It combines three different approaches.The first is a SARIMAX time-series model, designed to capture temporal patterns and persistence in the historical ENSO data.The second is a gradient-boosted machine-learning classifier, which looks for nonlinear relationships in the historical data and classifies the likely ENSO state.The third is a classical Markov-chain transition model, which approaches the problem from the perspective of transitions between states: El Niño, Neutral and La Niña.The forecasts are then blended.This is important because every model has weaknesses.A time-series model may capture persistence particularly well but fail to capture complex nonlinear relationships.A machine-learning model may detect patterns that a conventional statistical model misses, while also being more susceptible to historical peculiarities.A Markov model is comparatively simple, but it provides an independent perspective on how the system transitions between states.Rather than allowing one model to dictate the answer, the system asks what happens when these different approaches are considered together.And the answer is striking.<h3>September 2026 forecast</h3>Using information available through June 2026, the blended forecast for September 2026 is:El Niño: 94.1%Neutral: 5.5%La Niña: 0.4%The system therefore identifies El Niño as overwhelmingly the most likely ENSO state for September 2026.See app in detail below:<a href="https://elnino.streamlit.app/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://elnino.streamlit.app/</a>The app's live classification layer produces an even stronger signal, assigning approximately 99.1% probability to El Niño, against 0.8% for Neutral and 0.1% for La Niña.That does not mean there is a 94.1% probability that Zambia will experience drought.That distinction is extremely important.The model is forecasting ENSO, not Zambian rainfall.ENSO is a large-scale climate phenomenon. Translating that signal into a prediction about rainfall in Zambia requires another layer of modelling involving rainfall history, geography, atmospheric conditions, seasonality and potentially soil moisture and temperature.But the ENSO signal is still economically valuable.It gives us something that every risk manager wants:time. <h2>From the Pacific Ocean to a Zambian maize field</h2>Why should Zambia care about a temperature anomaly in the Pacific Ocean?Because climate does not respect economic borders.The 2023/24 El Niño episode demonstrated this brutally.Zambia experienced one of its most severe droughts in decades. Agricultural production was heavily affected, particularly maize. The consequences subsequently moved beyond farms and into markets, households and public finances.The chain is familiar:Climate shock → agricultural shock → food-supply shock → price shock → household-income shock → fiscal pressure.That is the real economic significance of El Niño.It is not simply a weather story.It is a risk transmission mechanism.When rainfall fails, farmers lose production.When production falls, food availability tightens.When supply tightens, prices rise.When food prices rise, household purchasing power falls.When households struggle, government intervention becomes more important.Suddenly, something that began thousands of kilometres away in the Pacific becomes an issue for the Bank of Zambia, the Ministry of Agriculture, grain traders, banks, insurers and ordinary households. <h2>Perhaps we are asking the wrong question</h2>The conventional question is:“Will El Niño cause drought?”A better question is:“What can we do if the probability of an El Niño event becomes sufficiently high?”That changes everything.A farmer might reconsider crop choices.An agricultural lender might reconsider portfolio exposure.An insurer might reassess agricultural risk.A grain trader might review inventory positions.Government might consider strategic grain stocks earlier.Irrigation investments might become more urgent.Water utilities might stress-test supply.Development agencies might bring forward resilience programmes.And financial institutions could begin pricing climate risk into agricultural lending.The forecast becomes valuable not because it tells us exactly what will happen, but because it allows decisions to be made before the consequences arrive. <h2>The case for Njala Insurance</h2>This is where the idea of Njala Insurance becomes particularly interesting.The concept is built around a simple proposition: Zambia should explore agricultural insurance mechanisms that are designed around the realities of smallholder farmers and the risks they actually face.Traditional insurance asks the farmer to pay a monetary premium.But for a farmer whose biggest asset is the harvest itself, there may be another way to think about the transaction.What if insurance could be connected more directly to expected agricultural output?What if farmers could contribute a portion of their harvest or expected production into a risk-pooling mechanism?The ancient Joseph story provides the philosophical metaphor.Store something during abundance because scarcity is possible.Modern statistics provide the other half of the idea.We now have increasingly sophisticated ways of identifying when the probability of climate disruption is rising.The combination of the two is powerful:Ancient wisdom tells us to prepare.Modern statistics tell us when the risk may be rising.Financial innovation determines how we can act on that information. <h2>We should not confuse prediction with prophecy</h2>There is also a danger in all of this.A 94.1% probability can sound like certainty.It is not.A statistical forecast is not prophecy.It is a statement about probability conditional on the data, model structure and assumptions used.The model could be wrong.The atmosphere could behave differently.ENSO could transition unexpectedly.And even if El Niño develops exactly as anticipated, Zambia's rainfall response will not necessarily mirror the previous event.This is why good forecasting should never produce complacency.It should produce preparedness.The objective is not to predict the future perfectly.The objective is to reduce the cost of being surprised. <h2>The ocean is giving us a warning before the fields do</h2>There is something profound about the fact that the earliest signal of a potential agricultural crisis may come from an ocean thousands of kilometres away.A fisherman sees the ocean changing.A meteorologist sees atmospheric patterns.A statistician sees a distribution shifting.A machine-learning model sees probabilities.A farmer eventually sees the consequences in the field.These are not separate events.They are different points along the same system.The opportunity for Zambia is to connect them.We should be building systems in which climate information flows into agricultural planning, financial risk management, insurance, food-security policy and investment decisions.Because by the time the farmer sees the drought, it may already be too late to prepare. <h2>The next Pharaoh moment</h2>The emerging 2026 El Niño signal should therefore not be treated as a reason for panic.It should be treated as an opportunity to test whether Zambia has learned the lesson of 2023/24.If the models are wrong, preparation will have cost something.If the models are right, preparation could save considerably more.That is the economics of uncertainty.We do not need certainty before acting.We need risk-adjusted decisions.Perhaps this is ultimately what the story of Pharaoh and Joseph was trying to teach us.The wisdom was not in knowing exactly what the future would look like.The wisdom was in recognising that good years and bad years could coexist within the same system — and that a society capable of looking ahead could use the former to prepare for the latter.The Pacific Ocean has begun sending another signal.The latest statistical evidence suggests that El Niño is overwhelmingly the most likely ENSO state for September 2026.Zambia should listen.Not because the future is certain.But because uncertainty is precisely why preparation matters.And sometimes, the difference between a crisis and a manageable shock is not whether we knew what was coming.It is whether we were willing to act when the probability became high enough.

El Niño Is Coming Again: What the Pacific Ocean May Be Telling Zambia

There are moments when an old idea suddenly becomes relevant again. In Zambia, as we look toward another potentially difficult climate season, one such idea can be found not in a modern economic textbook, but in an ancient agricultural instruction: do not harvest the corners of your field.Leviticus 19:9–10 and Leviticus 23:22 instruct farmers not to reap their fields completely or gather everything from the edges. What remained was to be available to the poor and vulnerable. Deuteronomy 24:19 contains a related principle: if a farmer forgot a sheaf in the field, it was to be left behind rather than collected again. Together, these formed part of a broader system of agricultural provision for vulnerable people.At first glance, this may appear to have little to do with climate change, agricultural insurance or Zambia's food-security challenges. But there is a deeper economic principle embedded in the practice: in times of abundance, deliberately preserve something that can protect society in times of scarcity.That principle was the inspiration behind a paper I wrote in 2023 titled Njala (Hunger) Insurance – Pharaoh and Joseph Climate Change Adaptation Strategy in Zambia. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/105920661/Njala_Insurance_Pharaoh_and_Joseph_Climate_Change_Adaptation_Strategy_in_Zambia" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.academia.edu/105920661/Njala_Insurance_Pharaoh_and_Joseph_Climate_Change_Adaptation_Strategy_in_Zambia</a> The idea was simple: if Zambia is increasingly exposed to droughts, floods and unpredictable agricultural seasons, perhaps we should think differently about how farmers insure themselves against hunger.The conventional insurance model requires a farmer to pay a premium, usually in cash, in exchange for protection against a future loss. But for a smallholder farmer whose income is largely tied to the harvest, finding cash to pay an insurance premium can itself be a challenge. Why not allow part of the harvest to become the insurance contribution?This is the basic idea behind Njala Insurance.A farmer could, for example, contribute a small percentage of their maize harvest to a structured food-security reserve. Rather than selling or consuming every kilogram produced in a good year, a small portion would be deliberately set aside. In a bad year, that reserve could be used to provide food, income support, seed or other assistance to farmers and communities affected by climate shocks.It is, in essence, an agricultural insurance mechanism built around the physical commodity rather than solely around money.The idea also draws from the biblical story of Pharaoh and Joseph. When Joseph interpreted Pharaoh's dreams as a warning of seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine, his recommendation was not to wait for the famine before acting. Egypt was advised to use the years of plenty to accumulate reserves that could be drawn down when food became scarce.The economic lesson is timeless: a society that consumes all of its surplus during good times leaves itself dangerously exposed when conditions change.Zambia knows this lesson particularly well.Agriculture remains highly dependent on rainfall, while climate variability is making the traditional assumptions about farming seasons increasingly unreliable. Drought does not only reduce maize production. It affects household incomes, livestock, food prices, electricity generation, government finances and the ability of farmers to purchase inputs for the following season. A climate shock can quickly become a broader economic shock.This is why the conversation about climate adaptation needs to move beyond what happens after a disaster.We tend to think of resilience in terms of what the government will do when a drought occurs: how much maize will be imported, how much relief will be distributed, how much money will be allocated and how vulnerable households will be supported.But insurance works differently. Insurance asks us to prepare before the disaster.The developing El Niño provides another reason to have this conversation now.El Niño does not automatically mean that Zambia will experience drought, and every El Niño event is different. But Southern Africa has historically experienced significant rainfall disruptions during some El Niño events, and the emergence of a strong event should give policymakers, farmers and businesses reason to think seriously about climate preparedness.The important question is therefore not whether we can predict exactly what the 2026/27 agricultural season will look like.We probably cannot.The better question is whether Zambia can build systems that remain useful even when our predictions are wrong.That is where Njala Insurance becomes interesting.Imagine a farmer harvesting 100 bags of maize. Instead of treating all 100 bags as immediately available for consumption or sale, perhaps five are designated as a resilience contribution. The farmer retains the other 95. Across thousands or millions of farmers, those small contributions could create a significant physical reserve.The reserve could be managed through cooperatives, accredited warehouses or other appropriately regulated institutions. Digital records could track who contributed, how much was stored and what quantity remains. Weather data and agricultural monitoring systems could help determine when a particular region is experiencing a significant climate shock. Mobile money could support financial compensation where appropriate.The idea could also be combined with conventional agricultural insurance.A farmer might contribute grain to a physical reserve while also participating in weather-index insurance. The physical reserve would provide food-security protection, while financial insurance could compensate for income losses. Government could potentially provide some form of subsidy for vulnerable farmers without having to carry the entire cost of disaster response.This would turn the traditional concept of a grain reserve into something more distributed and participatory.Instead of food security being something held entirely by the state, farmers themselves could become participants in the resilience system.But there is an important warning.Njala Insurance should not become another government programme where grain disappears into warehouses, payments are delayed and political considerations determine who receives assistance. The concept would only work if it is built around transparency, accountability and trust.Every contribution would need to be recorded. Every kilogram would need to be accounted for. Storage losses would need to be independently monitored. Release conditions would need to be established before a crisis occurs. Farmers would need to know exactly what their contribution entitles them to receive when a qualifying event takes place.Technology could make this considerably easier than it was in the past.A digital platform could create a farmer-level record of contributions. Warehouse operators could maintain digital inventories. Satellite imagery and weather stations could provide independent evidence of drought conditions. Statistical models could monitor production risks. Mobile payments could distribute compensation. Blockchain may even have a limited role in creating auditable commodity records, although the basic system does not require fashionable technology to work.The important innovation is not the software.It is the institutional design.The deeper lesson from the "corners of the field" is that resilience can be built into ordinary economic behaviour. Farmers do not necessarily need to wait for a government programme to arrive after a disaster. Communities can deliberately preserve a portion of their production before the crisis.That is what makes the idea worth discussing in Zambia today.Climate adaptation is often presented as something requiring billions of dollars in new infrastructure. Those investments are important. Zambia needs irrigation, climate-smart agriculture, better meteorological systems, drought-resistant crops, improved storage and resilient energy infrastructure.But adaptation is also about institutions.It is about designing systems that allow society to absorb shocks without collapsing.A farmer who keeps part of a harvest in reserve is practising a form of adaptation. A community that maintains a grain reserve is practising adaptation. A country that builds strategic food stocks before a drought is practising adaptation.Njala Insurance simply attempts to formalise that instinct.Perhaps Zambia could test the concept rather than debate it indefinitely. A pilot could begin with a few cooperatives in drought-prone districts. Farmers could voluntarily contribute a small percentage of their maize harvest. The pilot could measure participation, storage costs, farmer satisfaction, losses, food-price effects and the ability of the reserve to provide support during a shock.If it works, the model could expand.If it fails, Zambia would learn something relatively cheaply.That is preferable to discovering the weaknesses of our food-security system in the middle of a national drought.The biblical instruction about the corners of the field was never intended as an insurance policy in the modern actuarial sense. But it contained a powerful economic idea: do not consume everything when times are good. Leave something behind for the day when circumstances change.That principle has survived in different forms across human societies. Today, we call it reserves, insurance, buffers, contingency funds and risk management.Perhaps we can call one version of it Njala Insurance.As Zambia watches the climate, the economy and the next agricultural season, we should not only ask how much we can produce.We should ask how much of what we produce we are prepared to preserve.Because the most effective response to tomorrow's hunger may begin with what we are willing to leave in the corners of today's fields.

The Corners of Zambia’s Fields: Why Njala Insurance Could Be Our Answer to the Next El Niño

Zambia has barely finished counting election ballots, and the next economic test is already visible on the horizon. Economist Kampamba Shula says the country must move quickly beyond the polls and prepare for anticipated El Niño weather conditions, warning that inadequate preparation could cut electricity supply, disrupt production and drag down economic growth at exactly the moment a new government needs momentum.Speaking to Phoenix Business News, Shula made a point that anyone who ran a business through 2024 will recognise immediately. Zambia’s current alternative power generation capacity is not enough to meet growing electricity demand, particularly from the mining sector. When the water level at Kariba falls, there is no backup fleet large enough to take its place.For full article see link below:<a href="https://zambianeconomist.com/el-nino-warning-zambia-power-gap-drought-preparations/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://zambianeconomist.com/el-nino-warning-zambia-power-gap-drought-preparations/</a>

El Nino Warning: Zambia Told to Fix Its Power Gap Before the Drought Bites

A strange August shower in Lusaka may have been easy to dismiss. But behind the unusual weather is a much bigger story about a changing climate, an approaching El Niño and the economic risks Zambia should already be preparing for.On 13 August, Zambia had other things on its mind.The country was consumed by elections. Conversations revolved around polling stations, voters, political parties, turnout, results and what the next five years might look like. For a few days, almost everything else seemed secondary.And then, in parts of Lusaka, it rained. Not November rain. Not December rain. Not the familiar afternoon downpour that arrives after the clouds have gathered over the capital during the wet season. August rain.For most people, it was probably little more than an oddity. Some may have welcomed it. Others may simply have carried on with their day. In a country where rain is such a familiar part of life, it is easy to forget just how unusual rainfall can be during the heart of the dry season.Zambia's rainfall follows a remarkably distinct seasonal pattern. The wet season generally runs from around September or October through April, driven largely by the movement of the tropical rain belt. August, by contrast, sits firmly within the country's dry and cool season. The IMF describes the period from May to August as particularly dry, while climate assessments of Zambia note that rainfall is generally concentrated in the wet season.So an August shower in Lusaka is not, by itself, evidence of climate change. Nor can we say that El Niño caused the rain. Weather is too complicated for that kind of conclusion.But perhaps that is precisely why we should pay attention.The important climate story is not necessarily that it rained on one unusual August afternoon. It is that the weather patterns on which Zambia's economy has depended for generations are becoming increasingly difficult to take for granted.Climate change does not always announce itself with a dramatic flood or a catastrophic drought. Sometimes it appears in smaller ways: an unusually warm winter morning, a strange dry spell, a storm arriving at the wrong time, rainfall becoming more erratic, or a season beginning differently from what farmers have come to expect.These events can seem insignificant when viewed individually. Their significance becomes clearer when they form part of a longer pattern.And now, as Zambia looks towards the 2026–27 rainy season, another warning is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.El Niño is coming.In fact, it is already developing. The World Meteorological Organization warned earlier this year that El Niño was expected to develop from mid-2026, with the phenomenon likely to influence global temperature and rainfall patterns. By June, the WMO was putting the probability of El Niño continuing into November at around 90 percent or higher. The latest forecasts are even more striking.On 13 August — the same day Zambians were going to the polls — the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño Advisory. Its latest assessment puts the probability of a very strong El Niño at more than 90 percent during the Northern Hemisphere autumn and winter of 2026–27. There is also a 69 percent probability that the October–December period could reach historically extreme levels.That does not mean Zambia will automatically experience a drought. El Niño is a global climate phenomenon and its local effects are complicated. But Southern Africa is one of the regions where the relationship between El Niño and rainfall has historically mattered greatly.For Zambia, that should immediately get the attention of anyone thinking seriously about the economy.We have been here before. The 2023–24 El Niño season produced one of the worst droughts Zambia had experienced in decades. Agriculture was badly affected, food insecurity increased and the country's dependence on hydropower became a major economic vulnerability. The drought demonstrated something that economists sometimes forget when constructing models: rainfall is an economic variable.When the rains fail, maize production suffers. When maize production falls, food prices come under pressure. When water levels decline, hydropower generation suffers. When electricity becomes unreliable, businesses reduce production or increase their operating costs. When farmers lose income, rural demand weakens. When food and electricity have to be imported, foreign-exchange pressures can increase.A climatic shock can therefore move through an economy in much the same way as a financial shock.It starts in the atmosphere and eventually arrives in household budgets, business balance sheets and government accounts.That is why the coming El Niño should not be treated as a story exclusively for farmers.It is a story for the Bank of Zambia. It is a story for the Ministry of Finance. It is a story for ZESCO, farmers, manufacturers, banks, retailers and investors. It is a story for anyone trying to understand Zambia's inflation, food security, electricity supply and economic growth over the next twelve months.The African Union has already been urging countries to move away from simply responding to climate disasters after they occur and towards anticipatory action. Its 2026 continental discussions on El Niño have specifically highlighted agriculture, energy, water, infrastructure, health and other climate-sensitive sectors.That is the right approach.Because the biggest mistake Zambia could make is to wait for the drought to become obvious before treating it as a serious economic risk.By then, the farmer may already have planted. The reservoir may already be falling. The electricity deficit may already be appearing. The price of maize may already be rising.Preparation works precisely because it happens before the crisis becomes visible.And there is a particularly uncomfortable irony about the timing of all this.Zambia has spent much of 2026 looking at politics. The election has understandably consumed public attention. The country has been debating who should lead, what policies should change and what the next political chapter will look like.But while we have been watching the ballot, another process has been unfolding thousands of kilometres away in the Pacific Ocean.El Niño does not care about election calendars.It will not wait for the new government to settle in. It will not wait for the Cabinet to be appointed. It will not wait for Parliament to debate the budget. And it certainly will not wait for Zambia to finish arguing about politics.The irony is that by the time the political dust settles, the next rainy season will already be approaching.And this is where that strange August shower becomes an interesting metaphor.We should not look at the rain that fell in Lusaka on 13 August and conclude that El Niño has arrived. That would be bad science.But neither should we look at it and shrug off the broader message: the climate system on which we have built our agriculture, energy system and economic expectations is becoming less predictable.The coming months deserve attention.If El Niño strengthens as forecast, Zambia could face a difficult 2026–27 agricultural season. The critical questions will not simply be whether it rains, but when it rains, how much it rains, how evenly that rainfall is distributed and whether there are long dry spells between rainfall events. Even a season that eventually receives reasonable total rainfall can be economically damaging if that rainfall arrives at the wrong time for crops.And that is why the country should be preparing now.Farmers need timely climate information. Energy planners need to stress-test hydropower assumptions. Government needs contingency plans for food and electricity. Businesses should consider their exposure to water, power and agricultural supply chains. Financial institutions should think about agricultural credit risk. Policymakers should incorporate climate scenarios into economic forecasts rather than treating weather as an external surprise.The lesson from the August rain is therefore not that Zambia is suddenly experiencing an El Niño.The lesson is that we should become much better at noticing the signals before they become shocks.On 13 August, Zambia was busy counting votes.Perhaps, in the months ahead, we should also start counting something else: rainfall, reservoir levels, crop conditions, temperatures and the probability of another difficult agricultural season.Because the next major economic shock may not arrive with a political speech, a currency announcement or a budget statement.It may arrive quietly in the clouds.We spent August watching the ballot. By November, we may be watching the sky.And by then, the question will no longer be whether Zambia saw the warning coming.It will be whether we prepared for it.

While Zambia Was Watching the Ballot, the Weather Was Sending a Warning

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The Nilometer

Farmers Urged to Leave Crop Residues as El Niño Risk Looms

El Niño Is Coming Again: What the Pacific Ocean May Be Telling Zambia

The Corners of Zambia’s Fields: Why Njala Insurance Could Be Our Answer to the Next El Niño

El Nino Warning: Zambia Told to Fix Its Power Gap Before the Drought Bites

While Zambia Was Watching the Ballot, the Weather Was Sending a Warning