Role of community in mitigating floods: case of Makululu in kabwe dist

Zambia continues to grapple with the challenge of managing urban floods during the rainy season. Among many reasons is a lack of capacity from the local people to manage floods and poor planning by various stakeholders like the council and civil society organisation. The hardest hit area are those built without proper planning and lack of drainages to allow rain water to flow through established channels. This research sought to investigate the impact that community involvement has towards flood mitigation in urban areas. To achieve the aim above, the study used the following objectives: (i) to find out the challenges the community face when mitigating floods; (ii) to determine the impact of flood to the community and (iii) to explore ways of reducing the occurrence of floods. The following research questions were asked to achieve the objectives above: what are the main livelihoods of the people? What challenges does the community face in flood mitigation? How can impacts of floods be mitigated? How has community sensitisation helped in flood mitigation? How can the occurrence of floods be minimised?