Dear friends,
We are pleased to announce that the board and committee of Platform Zambia are organizing the next Zambia Day on 28 March 2026.
Location: 'De Ruimte', Nimfenplein 1, 1363 SV Almere-Poort.
The main language will be English, and the main topic is:
Affordable and simple solutions for water, energy and food problems in rural areas in Zambia
In line with our work in 2024 and 2025 we continue to strive to:
1. Intensify the transition process of development work towards new styles of collaboration.
2. Offer examples of good practice that may help Zambia to be more resilient against drastic climate influences.
By choosing this topic the board is adhering to the requests of several participants who attended the Zambia Day 2025 in Amersfoort and hopes to contribute towards tackling the effects of the drought crisis.
The event will take place in Almere-Poort this year. There will be ample time in the afternoon to reflect and talk in small groups about preselected discussion statements on the main topic.
The facility ‘De Ruimte’ is easily accessible by public transport (also for international trains!) as well as by car. There is a large car park with plenty of spaces. Train and bus stations are close by. Please use the 9292.nl public transport travel planning tool.
Please view the Programme Zambia Day 2026 on this website. Make sure to fill out the registration form in time and transfer the money to our bank account. Due to catering arrangements, we kindly request that you respond as soon as possible, but no later than March 15. The best way to do this is via
We hope you will share this message with your fellow board members. As a committee, we are very enthusiastic about this programme and hope to receive your response soon. Even if you are unfortunately unable to attend, we would appreciate hearing from you soon. As we incur costs in advance, we kindly request that you transfer the € 20,00 per person to account number NL97 INGB 0004473757 in the name of Stichting Werkgroep Zambia before March 15th.
Kind regards, on behalf of the board.
Platform Zambia
Meet the key speaker of Zambia Day 2026:
Henk Holtslag
Henk has 30 years of work experience in 15 developing countries. He was involved in the development and introduction of Rope pumps in Nicaragua of which still 50.000 are used for both communal and household water supply. As advisor to the MetaMeta company in Wageningen, he assists SMART Centres in Africa that train the local private sector in innovative and market-based water technologies that can be reproduced locally.
Examples include manual well drilling, rope, pedal and solar pumps, water storage and harvesting, irrigation and household water filters. The focus is on technologies for income generation and food security.
There will be 3 presentations:
- Clean drinking water for Zambia with water filters
This presentation will provide information on effective and low-cost options to treat water at household level and approaches to scale up. There will be examples that demonstrate that safe drinking water at the point of use is possible with filters as an intermediate solution until water systems have been managed safely. The cost would be a 1-time subsidy/ investment of $4/ person. If this model were implemented, everybody in Zambia could have clean drinking water for “just” $40 million.
- Increasing food production and access to water with Deep Bed Farming & SMARTechs
This presentation will share examples showing that yields of rain fed crops such as maize can increase from 2 to 6 tonnes / hectare without the use of fertiliser. This has been proven in Malawi where some 20.000 farmers use the so-called Deep Bed Farming (DBF) method that infiltrates all rainwater in the ground. The Malawi government approved this method and intends to scale up to 1 million farmers. See tiyeni.org
If DBF is combined with Farm wells that can be made with SMARTechs, farmers’ families will have also water in the dry season for small scale irrigation or livestock. Farm wells also provide water for domestic use and, if combined with a water filter, provide safe drinking water. See smartcentregroup.com
- Jacana. An NGO that creates food security & jobs in Zambia
This presentation highlights the activities of the Jacana Foundation which is active in Eastern Zambia, Chipata, Lundazi and Petauke. They train local entrepreneurs in the manual drilling of wells, rope pumps and portable solar pumps and other affordable solar systems for rural homes and enterprises. They also train farmers in growing crops, bee keeping, producing bio fertiliser and other technologies. See also: jacana.help