By STEPHEN KAPAMBWE –
ZAMBIA may not be well known by people on the streets of western capitals like London or Paris or even Washington DC, in comparison to countries like Nigeria or Tunisia.
This is because of the absence of the kind of news ‘diet’ which the western media thrives on; like civil wars, tyrants, military coups, or extremists.
To Zambia’s Charge’d Affairs at the country’s mission in Sweden, this unpopularity is not a bad thing.
Appearing on this week’s Sunday Interview on State television ZNBC, Charge’d Affairs at Zambia’s mission in Stockholm Anthony Mukwita said he takes pride in the fact that the country is not popular for wrong reasons.
He said he and other Zambian envoys serving in the Foreign Service often explain that Zambia is not known to many western nationals because there are no news reports in western news agencies like Cable
News Network (CNN) and BBC about people starving or killing each other.
“These are some of the things that I tell people out there because they often say they have never heard of Zambia and I explain that they never hear about Zambia on CNN or BBC because we don’t kill each other, we are not starving and we are not facing any calamities.
“And I tell them that we have been graded as one of the countries that is an emerging economy in the region, and these are not our statistics; they are statistics based on international standards,” he said.
He said many people get surprised when they are told about Zambia’s track record in politics where the country has conducted peaceful elections since its independence in 1964.
The nation has had six presidents in the last 50 years of independence, and that each one of the presidents has taken power in a peaceful transition.
Mr Mukwita said people even get shocked to learn that Zambia has lost two sitting presidents in the name of the late Levy Mwanawasa and late Michael Sata and yet the country still replaced them peacefully.
He said this has not been the case in a number of African countries where elections and power struggles have often led to bloodshed and civil wars which grab headlines in western news agencies.
“I know other people may say that we have this and that but even in the midst of stupendous wealth, there can still be stupendous poverty.
“The United States of America (USA), the last bastion of democracy, has about 16 million people that are out of the reach of the universal
healthcare, you know; and more than 30,000 people sometimes die from unlicensed guns or just guns at all.
“They have amended their Constitution I don’t know how many times, but it’s still not perfect,” he said.
He said Zambia has a track record of conducting peaceful elections and 2016 would be another occasion for the country to show the world yet again that it is the oasis of peace it is known to be.
He said it is because of such credentials that Zambia has hosted over 200,000 refugees running away from armed conflicts in their countries, and it is because of such credentials that renowned multinational conglomerates like Hitachi have come to set up shop in the country.
“People may want to know that such companies are coming to Zambia because this country has a legal system that delivers and investors know that they will not wake up one day and find that someone has taken over their equipment.
“If such a thing happens, they know that they can go to court and they will get their equipment back,” he said.
He said international investors were coming to Zambia because they knew that they could not wake up one day to news of a tyrannical military leader taking over the country in a coup.
On the contrary, Zambia has made both political and economic strides in the last 51 years.
Currently, Zambia has received an overwhelming response from foreign investors who have expressed interest to invest in the country’s energy sector to address the obtaining electricity deficit.
48 foreign based companies responded when the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) called for expression of interest in the development
of a grid-scale solar power initiative in October, 2015.
Eleven companies from nine countries were shortlisted from the 48 after they pre-qualified to submit bids for the development of the initial 2×50 MW utility-scale power plants under the first round of a 600MW scaling solar project.
This power project is besides thermal power stations already being built by private investors in Mazabuka’s Maamba town and other projects elsewhere in the country.
In his speech to at a dinner hosted by the Zambia-South Africa
Business Council a few weeks ago, President Lungu touched on some strides which have transformed the country’s way of doing business and made it attractive to investment.
President Lungu said Government’s policy of encouraging increased private sector investment, job and wealth creation have paid dividends.
He said the Government has continued to create a good investment climate.
The Government has also implemented economic policies aimed at creating an enabling business environment in order to attract foreign direct investment and stimulate local investments.
He said Government has also continued to pursue the implementation of the private sector development initiatives that promote and facilitate the development of a competitive private sector.
“As a result of our business environment reforms, Zambia is now ranked 8th in Africa, 7thin Sub-Saharan Africa, 5th in SADC (Southern Africa
Development Community) and 4th in COMESA in terms of the ease of doing business.
“Furthermore, Zambia is ranked the 8th most competitive country in Africa on the Global Competitiveness Index,” he said.
As Ambassador Mukwita alluded to, al the figures President Lungu referred to were from organisations of international repute.
Among the organisations is Forbes’ which last December ranked Zambia the seventh best country for doing business out of 54 African countries.
Forbes also rated Zambia as one of the world’s fastest growing economies for the last 10 years, with real gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaging between six and seven per cent each year.
Some of these achievements have been attributed to President Lungu’s leadership style which has been hailed at a number of international
fora.
For example, President Lungu’s speech to Parliament on 18th September, 2015 in which he outlined his Government’s approach towards turning around the fortunes of the country as well as reduce poverty, youth unemployment and grow the economy was hailed by United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki Moon who requested Mr Lungu to repeat some parts of the speech to the UN high-level meeting in New York in December last year.
In that speech, President Lungu outlined projects which the Government had put in place to not only address the power deficit, but transform
the country into an energy exporter, promote irrigation and conservation farming to shift the paradigm in agriculture, address the
falling value of the local currency and solve the threat of food insecurity.
Whereas Government has been criticised for borrowing heavily, it has argued that the money borrowed was going towards consumption but to building roads to boost economic activities and increase the country’s connectivity, health posts to reduce the country’s disease burden,
laying new railway tracks to transfer movement of cargo from roads to railways, and other capital investments.
Government has also put in place measures to achieve food security in the face of one of the worst droughts to affect parts of Africa in over 10 years.
Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Namibia have declared the drought in their
countries a national disaster and appealed for relief food supplies from the international community while Malawi is reported to have run out of money.
But President Lungu has vowed that no Zambian shall suffer hunger as Government has already put measures in place to import grain from if current food stocks run low.
President Lungu has made this assurance in spite of the Government having sufficient food stocks to last up to July, 2017.
Agriculture Minister Given Lubinda recently said as at 19th January,
2016, the country had over 1.2 million metric tonnes of maize; 1,282,797 metric tonnes to be precise.
President Lungu’s foresightedness in dealing with threats facing the country were recently hailed by a Saudi Arabian national, Noah Hassan
Abbaker, an interpreter at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Lusaka.
‘Zambia under the leadership of President Edgar Lungu is already recognised by the international community as a leader with a vision and supported by a wife who is passionate about children and women welfare.
‘Regionally, President Lungu has been recognised by the South Sudan government as well as the armed movement there, led by Riek Machar as mediator and a peace searcher for a solution to the civil war in that country.
‘It is rare in the African politics that both the ruling party and as such mediation is usually done through continental or international organisations such as the African Union Commission (AU) and United Nations (UN) respectively.
‘President Lungu has been selected by the African Union (AU)) to spearhead the gender issue as the AU has recognised his efforts towards women empowerment,’ wrote Mr Abbaker.
Zambia is among countries that have made a short list of nations whose leaders have had the rare honour of visiting the Pope at the Vatican City.
These are but just some of the stories Zambia boasts of which remain untold to the western world.