UN Joint Programme on Enhancing Competitiveness and Sustainable Business among MSMEs in the Building Construction Industry in Zambia – Inception Phase Over the last few years, Zambia has managed to maintain an impressive macro-economic growth rate; however, this track record has not translated into requisite progress in the fight against poverty. The Government of Zambia fully recognizes the challenge to facilitate more-broad based wealth and job creation and has identified private sector development as a strategic means to boost employment, with particular emphasis on the development of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME). However, Government is yet to make a more deliberate link between MSME development, job creation and green economy development, and to explicitly focus on the creation of green jobs through MSME that make a direct contribution to the preservation or restoration of environmental quality – including jobs that help to protect ecosystems and biodiversity, reduce energy, material and water consumption through high efficiency strategies, de-carbonize the economy and minimize or altogether avoid generation of all forms of waste and pollution. One sector with high potential for the creation of green jobs through MSME development in Zambia is the building industry within the construction sector. The construction sector has been identified as one of the main enablers of economic growth by the Government of Zambia, with potential to contribute towards greening the economy. The sector has experienced rapid growth in recent years, and is poised to expand further on the back of public sector funded infrastructure development projects and strong demand in the residential housing and office retail market. The building & housing industry in particular offers excellent potential for broad based wealth and job creation due its high labour intensity, low entry barriers for semi-skilled and unskilled labour, and high concentration of MSMEs. The building and housing industry is furthermore an excellent conduit to facilitate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of the built environment, through the promotion of eco-friendly building and housing materials and goods and the installation of renewable energy technologies like solar water geysers in buildings. The joint programme seeks to unlock the job creation potential of the emerging green economy in Zambia, with a focus on the value chain for green building goods and services, from local production of environmentally friendly building materials through to more energy efficient building design. The target group focus is on MSMEs along the entire value chain, but with emphasis on emerging indigenous contractors with willingness and capacity to grow and formalize their business operations. The programme intervention mix is inspired by a market system development framework and accordingly focuses on multi-level interventions that seek to gradually change the perceptions held in the market place towards green building, to facilitate a more enabling regulatory environment for doing green business, to capacitate local suppliers to provide green building materials and services, and to stimulate uptake in local consumer markets. The overall outcome of the joint programme is sustainable livelihoods, through the creation of green jobs in sustainable MSMEs operating in the Zambian building industry. The immediate programme outcomes are: (1) Increased appreciation in the Zambian public at large, and building industry stakeholders in particular, for green building principles, (2) A refined industry-specific regulatory framework that stimulates demand among private and public housing developers for environmentally friendly building materials and –methods, and (3) MSMEs have enhanced capacity to effectively participate in the building construction and green building goods and services market in Zambia. To achieve these outcomes, the programme will boost the knowledge base among building industry stakeholders in Zambia both on the supply side and the demand side about international best practice in green building standards a