Africa-Press – Zambia. Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) are back in Zambia in another form but they say, a leopard does not change its spots. What worries me is how some of our officials seem to think that they are here to help our people forgetting what they did to us during privatisation.
This week on Tuesday 5 April 2022, Zambia hosted the UK Minister for Africa Vicky Ford who was here to launch the British Investment International (BII). It was front-page news in most of the papers in Zambia and up until Thursday today 7 April 7, 2022, still in the Mast and Daily Mail because most of our people think that these are benevolent white people that have come to help us. Could you be loved and be loved?
I was waiting to hear how our very own private sector will stand to benefit from this launch instead of crumbs being proposed but all I heard was how the commerce minister Chipoka Mulenga appealed for direct flights between Zambia and the UK. He gave examples of flights between Brussels and Kinshasa, Luanda, and Lisbon. I thought the reason we set up Zambia Airways is to one day make our own direct flight to London instead of handing over this route back to the British that abandoned it.
I do not think he knew exactly what was happening which is typical of most Africans when they are invited to officiate something organized by white people. They think they are loved forgetting that they are just being pampered for something bigger to be taken from them.
Even though he mentioned free education, our commerce minister seems to think that we are educating our people for free so that they can be employed by the British private sector instead of our own. This is music to those British businesses especially that it was coming from a government official.
People must never forget that what the commerce minister was launching at Latitude 15 on Tuesday is what was previously known as the CDC which changed to CDC Group and now to being called the British International Investment which is also funded by the World Bank and are not made to jump through hoops to get their money. They came to Zambia during privatization pretending to be advisors to the government but ended up buying our profitable parastatals.
What was alarming for me was to hear Chipoka Mulenga saying that the government of Zambia is very committed to the private sector and the BII is the private sector we need. Why not talk about our very own people involved in the sector that the British are after?
I say this is alarming because the British International Investment is owned 100% by the British government and is the equivalent of our very own IDC which people like Yusuf Dodia have been criticizing. People must also never forget that the British never privatized everything the way these proponents of privatization have made us to believe.
It was the CDC that took Zambia Sugar and Chilanga Cement and gave to their own people and to this day, millions of dollars made from those companies do not benefit black Zambian owned companies. White South African, British, Australian, and American companies are the ones making money from those companies.
The UK Minister was here to look out for her people that are targeting investment in Solar and Geothermal that will generate power right here in Zambia. One of the companies to receive this so called investment is a UK company called InfraCo Africa which is part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG): it is managed as a private company although funded by governments in the UK (FCDO), the Netherlands (DGIS) and Switzerland (SECO).
Private Infrastructure Development Group is funded by what was called the Department for International Development (DFID) which has now been replaced by The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom.
We have people in Zambia parroting the phrase that government has no business in business, yet this is happening to an extent where our own commerce minister thinks he is dealing with the private sector.
What you see on the roadside in most of our local peasant farmer’s fields written Syngenta is actually a Switzerland based company and is one of the world’s largest pesticide and seed company that is also funded by the British government. We all know what happened with Switzerland and our resources.
SABMiller that owns Zambia Breweries a company that was once owned by our own government was also funded from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). When the UK Minister was talking about supporting Zambian businesses, SABMiller was one of those companies and I don’t see any normal person that can say these are our companies.
I was expecting to see Lunsemfwa Hydro which is owned by a Zambian with no help from the government and I thought our minister would have invited this company and those Zambians that are into power generation onboard as well. To ask for a direct flight to Lusaka by British Airways when other people are thinking about energy dominance in the region is a very strange request to come from a commerce minister.
The other company mentioned is Africa GreenCo which is funded by Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and they are supposed to be the renewable energy creditworthy buyer of power. All these ministers are paving the way for a 44 billion Euro Green Economy that will be dominated by foreign players.
Felix Mutati already gave out a huge portion to a French company and they too came with their own minister while we went with just an entourage without a single Zambian company.
To me this is the meaning of capitalism, but the only problem is that those representing us in the name of the same ideology are sleeping at the wheel while our green jobs are being taken by the CDC and their relatives.
After making money pretending to be a non-profit-making institution that focused on development and poverty reduction they have now reappeared as an alternative foreign lender to Africa to counter Chinese loans
They are back and about to embark on another one of their trickery in Zambia after they tricked us out of a lot of companies including Lafarge which has coincidentally been renamed back to its original name of Chilanga Cement.
The CDC has successfully repurposed itself as British Investment International (BII), an institution that focuses solely on private-sector investment and profit-making and is 100% owned by the British government. That private sector will be no doubt their own relatives.
Western countries were against the Chinese government lending to African governments and people thought they really cared about us. It is better we borrow from them, and they make a profit on us than directly from the Chinese because they will not make any profit then.
Since the CDC is funded by the World Bank, they have already gotten their money and are ready to start funding their relatives operating here in Zambia.
That is shrewd capitalism, and you don’t sit on the table where they are sharing the loot and cheer for the other side. We have the sun, the land, water and the wind! Why give these away for close to nothing? You must look out for your own people just like the British are looking out for their own people instead of begging for British Airways.
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