Zambia At 51

This week on the 24th of October, Zambia celebrated its 51 years of independence, but to my amazement not many Zambians are celebrating because of the lack of development and high standard of living all attributed to poor leadership. Zambia in the early year after independence was a southern Africa power house that demonstrated its dominance in southern Africa politics through the provision of aid and educational to other southern Africa countries that were still fighting for independence.

And I guess those were the good old days, for today’s Zambia faces a hush reality of an economic crisis and a fast depreciating currency (Kwacha) and few days ago the local currency was declared the worst trading currency which means investors’ confidence to invest in a free falling economy are low. Furthermore, Zambia faces a huge energy crisis which is characterized by the norm of the day ’load shedding’ which has deeply affecting the mining sectors’ productive and has resulted into job losses and that’s a big headache for the current government with general elections coming up as soon as mid next year.

And for a country like that is dependent on the mines as a job provider for its 13 years population, the load shedding and low demand of copper on the world market has left the economy beyond redemption. That’s why many Zambians feel celebrating of independence is a mockery because poverty is still norm of the day and some sectors of the population are now calling for the second colonization by Britain since African leaders have failed to govern.

ZAMBIA’S PROBLEMS	RESULTS
Depreciating Kwacha	Weak economy Low investor confidence High standard of living
Load shedding/ energy crisis	Low productive  high job loss
Unplanned borrowing	More debts High standard of living
Unconcerned citizens	Wrong leaders chosen

In other words, what Zambia is experiencing is what we can term as ‘midlife crisis’ caused by poor governance. And this can be seen through the two Eurobonds the government has borrowed in less than 4 years, but cannot account on how it was spent.

In conclusion, I believe Zambia’s future is bright if only new economic and social reforms are put into put and the government as the elected representative of the people becomes more concerned about the welfare of the electorate.

Written by Sishumba Musanda( writer at africaworldnews)

You can read more at http://www.africaworldnews.net/zambia-zambia-at-51/