The Forecast In mid-January 2023, the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) released its GDP growth estimate 1 and forecast for Zambia running from 2022 to 2027. The forecast for Zambia, although not great considering the level of economic activity required to rapidly reduce poverty countrywide, is optimistic compared to the GDP growth rate for the world and the USA. EIU projects Zambia’s GDP will grow in the years 2023 to 2027 by an average of 4.

Siavonga is the largest shoreline town on the Zambian side of Lake Kariba. It’s top four economic mainstays are hydropower from Kariba Dam, wild kapenta fishing, tilapia farming on the lake, and tourism. Tourism is the reason I had come to town in April, 2022. I had come to see for seeing’s sake; and to touch, for the first time, the dam and the lake it holds back. The dam is an enormous hunk of curved concrete.

On September 7th, 2021 the president of Zambia twitted: But for any country to be part of the progress and technological innovation happening around the world, it must pay attention to developments in high-tech; both the consumer internet software tech such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Google, WeChat, and the electronics hardware tech producing chips to embed in smart devices: iPhones, Teslas, drones and for 5G roll-out—Zambia is not doing that.

Zambians went to the polls to elect a president on August 12, 2021—they needed to re-elect the incumbent or choose a new one, along with new 156-member parliament (an additional 10 members are nominated by the president for a total of 166). Sixteen presidential candidates took part in the polls. The results reported by the Elections Council of Zambia (ECZ) show that the two leading presidential candidates, Hakainde Hichilema (HH), of the United Party for National Development (UPND) and Edgar Chagwa Lungu (ECL) of the Patriotic Front (PF) received 98% of the 4.