Zambia is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, with a population of 17.3 million people. It is bordered by Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Zambia is known for its natural beauty and wildlife conservation efforts. The country has vast areas of wilderness and is home to some of Africa’s most iconic animals such as elephants, lions and rhinos. It also has breathtaking waterfalls and lakes that attract visitors from all over the world. The official language of Zambia is English but many other languages are spoken such as Bemba, Nyanja and Tonga. The economy of Zambia is largely based on agriculture which includes crops such as maize (corn), millet, sorghum and groundnuts. Copper mining also plays an important role in the economy as it accounts for more than 65% of export earnings. Tourism has become increasingly important in recent years with national parks such as Kafue National Park becoming popular destinations for safari tours. See countries that begin with Z.
Yearbook 2004
Zambia. he total population in Zambia is 18,383,966 people in 2020. The attempts to convict former President Frederick Chiluba for corruption faced great difficulties, mainly for legal reasons. During the year, new charges were brought against Chiluba, who is accused of having embezzled the equivalent of about a quarter of a billion during his ten years in power. from the Treasury. In September, most of the charges were dropped, but at the same time new charges were brought. Court sources said prosecutors wanted to reorganize the charges in order to simplify and speed up the trials.
After a few financially difficult years, the situation for Zambia brightened in 2004. While the government decided that local elections which would have been held in November should be postponed for two years for economic reasons, but at the same time the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved the government’s economic policy and promised a loan of 320 million dollars to fight poverty. When the IMF broke ground, pledges from a number of donors in the West, including Sweden, followed for loans and assistance of nearly US $ 900 million. This money will mainly go to budget support, health care, education, development of private enterprise and environmental protection. However, the support is dependent on continued sound economic policy and restraint with government spending.
After several years of drought, Zambia recovered such a good harvest of maize that it could export to a number of neighboring countries, where there was still a great shortage of staple goods.
In August, Indian company Vendanta Resources bought 51% of the state copper mine Konkola for $ 48.2 million. Zambia was in an acute crisis in 2002, when the big company Anglo-American discontinued operations in Konkola.
Vice President Nevers Mumba was dismissed in October after accusing neighboring Congo (Kinshasa) of supporting Zambian opposition parties. He was also deprived of his seat in Parliament. Lupando Mwape, a former Deputy Minister, was appointed new Vice President.
The country, after a phase of great economic expansion in the first decade of independence as a result of the favorable conditions of the world copper market, experienced a long period of progressive difficulties. The population is 7,818,447. (1990), a fairly low value for a territory that is largely very fertile, and is almost half concentrated in urban areas located all along the “ train line ”, the railway axis that crosses it from north to south. been connecting with Zimbabwe the mining area on the border with Zaire. The main cities are, in addition to Lusaka (which in 1990 had 982,362 residents), those of the Copperbelt in the north (Kitwe and Ndola) and Livingstone in the south, in the Zambezi valley. The major ethnic groups, all of which belong to the Bantu stock, are the Bemba, present in the the copperbelt mining area, the Nyanja in the eastern provinces, the Tonga in the south and the Lozi in the west; the tribal languages are at least 80 with none clearly prevailing over the others. See a2zcamerablog.com for Zambia Victoria Falls.
The economy, based mainly on mineral resources, has always been unbalanced, with a clear superiority of the workers in the mining sector over other workers, a differentiation between the well-educated ruling class and the rest of the population, and a situation of privilege of those who live on the ” train line ” compared to those who live in the rest of the territory. These imbalances were accentuated in the 1970s, when everything was focused on mining, neglecting agriculture and livestock. The cities, which have grown up for the arrival of people from the countryside, do not have enough services and housing for the newcomers, so they are surrounded by vast shanty towns.. The crisis resulting from the drop in the price of copper, which caused a large number of unemployed, led the government to try to rebalance the economy in favor of the primary sector with an agricultural incentive policy.
Zambia has one of the largest copper deposits in the world. Copper and other derivatives from this mining activity (cobalt) account for 90% of all mining production in the country. The mining activity, already controlled by predominantly Anglo-American capital, is now managed by a single company with Zambian capital.
The Copperbelt can use four different export guidelines: before decolonization, copper ingots were exported mainly through the Belgian Congo and Portuguese Angola (by means of the Benguela railway); after 1960 the railway was used that through Zimbabwe arrives at Beira in Mozambique, and subsequently the Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA), which arrives at Dār-es-Salāām in Tanzania; but at the end of the 1980s the main export line resumed being that for Beira. The Copperbelt fields are beginning to be close to exhaustion and are less and less competitive on the world market.
Agriculture, which today primarily enjoys government investments, is divided into three levels: the first is made up of a hundred large companies that are dedicated to export products, the second by all the small farms that today are they are reorganizing, and the third by a mass of small farmers scattered throughout the territory and excluded from any possibility of reaching the market. The main food products are corn, cassava, millet, sorghum and vegetables: today we are trying to increase the production of wheat, rice and soy. Commercial products are cotton, oilseeds, sugar cane, fruit and tobacco: recent programs seek to develop the promising coffee crop.
Electricity production largely depends on the Kafue Gorge plant, south-east of Lusaka, which guarantees self-sufficiency for the country as well as exports to the Shaba (Zaire) and Zimbabwe. Transport is mainly based on railway lines and on a good road network, which is still insufficient in the peripheral regions. Exports mainly concern minerals and to a small extent agricultural and livestock products.