Over two half days on 1 and 2 February 2024, teams from Fernwasserversorgung Elbaue-Ostharz, Zweckverband Wasser und Abwasser Vogtland and Stadtentwässerung Dresden took the opportunity to learn more about tips and tricks as well as potential pitfalls in everyday working life with their Zambian colleagues.

The course began with general information about the country to gain a better understanding of Zambian culture. Zambia has a population of around 18 million and is home to 72 Bantu-speaking ethnic groups. There are also Khoisan, Indian, European and Chinese groups. Around 43 languages are spoken in Zambia. The expansion of copper mining in the 1930s also led to a wave of immigration from neighbouring countries and regions. Against this background, the Zambian population shows great tolerance towards foreigners and is characterised by cultural diversity.

Mutual respect is therefore highly valued. When establishing cooperation, the relationship level is of central importance and mutual trust is the basis on which everything else is built - or as the trainer, who is from Zambia himself, put it: "Build bridges from two sides! If you only build from one side, you can stand on it alone, but together you have no room."

Only when the joint bridge is in place do factual aspects gain importance in Zambia.

The German work mentality tends to have the opposite effect. It likes to prioritise the business level right from the start, tries to establish a level of cooperation through technical project planning and tends to leave "personal matters" to the end of the working day as they are considered less important. Criticism is often expressed openly, sometimes mercilessly honestly - and the relationship level is thereby jeopardised and, in the worst case, destroyed.

The culture of error is also very different. Whereas in Germany, attempts are often made to minimise errors from the outset through complex preliminary analyses and lengthy planning procedures, the motto in Zambia is more "Try it out!", learning from mistakes and optimising processes. Both paths can lead to the goal. It is important to be open to this in order to strengthen rather than weaken the motivation of all those involved. It is important to take time, instead of looking at the clock, and to try to do things better together.

A good, trusting relationship ultimately creates a sense of belonging to the project and therefore a good basis for the project's success.

The participants were happy to learn about these and many other tips. They were unanimous: "A great event, a very likeable man with a lot of life experience and wisdom! And you learnt for life."

The trainer was also pleased with the participants: "You are a good group; you all fit in well in Zambia!"

---

The utility partnership is part of the EU-WOP Programme, which is funded by the European Union and managed by the UN-Habitat led Global Water Operators' Partnerships Alliance (GWOPA). The programme leverages the demonstrated capacity of utilities to help one another reach the SDGs.

---

The course is part of various training programmes that are made available to the partnerships within the Utility Platform. In addition to courses in regional studies on the different countries of the numerous partnerships and intercultural communication, the utilities were also able to receive training in counselling skills. An introduction to project-related social media was also provided to strengthen social media coverage of the positive impacts achieved by the partnerships. Other offers are specifically aimed at the particularly challenging conditions of the German-Ukrainian solidarity utility partnerships: for example, training on resilience in times of crisis was organised to strengthen cooperation with war-affected partners.