Africa-Press – Zambia. The Zambia of today, 10 years from 2011, is a very different proposition in terms of being an attractive place to do business. There has never been a country on earth that went form the Zambia of 2011 without massive investment in infrastructure and public services and became an economic super power.
All economic regeneration and development are always preceded by massive investment in public services particularly infrastructure such as transport and communication, health and education.
This was true in China, India, Brazil and has always been true in Europe and America. Even as we speak the UK is investing heavily to upgrade its infrastructure and public services in order to broaden the economic opportunities across the country. The USA is doing the same with almost 2 trillion dollars proposed by the Biden administration to upgrade its infrastructure. China has been building roads, railways and communications networks as well as building schools and universities like there is no tomorrow. India started by investing heavily in education, research and development and technology as well as in health and transport and communication.
In fact, the only countries lagging behind in all these are mostly in Africa. That is how you create an enabling environment for the nation to take off economically.
What Zambians are doing or want to do is basically being impatient. So they say, you have invested all the money in roads, schools & hospitals – so where are jobs?
In 10 years, from almost no functional roads, almost no tele-communication infrastructure, a couple of universities and a few hospitals, you want massive employment to suddenly come?
From where? The truth is it takes time for investors to look at a nation and assess its business environment. Perhaps in the next 10 years m, a whole bunch of folks might visit Zambia and find they can run around Lusaka without being sick when they get back to their hotels because of potholes, they can fly to all sorts of places within an hour and can see that there are reliable transport links from some random remote location in Zambia to the railway line.
Then, they could say, you know what – let’s go and build a plant in Zambia because we would easily and cheaply be able to move the goods we will manufacture to market including export markets. You don’t just wake up, scratch here and there and expect a high life.
That is just wishful thinking and as long as the nation collectively thinks that way, there will always be ba Kelenka who would take advantage of that and promise you quick fixes and heaven on earth. It will never happen because it has never happened anywhere on earth.
It took China since the early 70s through 80s, 90s when they started seeing real economic growth leading through the 20s. Many nations you never heard of before like Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea had, for decades, been investing in infrastructure and building the national capacity. By the time they got your attention, you presumed, they just clapped their hands and it all came together.
Why do you think pretty much all African nations have the same problems? Why isn’t Ghana an economic power house? Why isn’t Nigeria an economic power house?
Even Rwanda has had to invest heavily in infrastructure not over 5 or 10 years but over atleast 20 years (Paul Kagame has been President in Rwanda for 21 years now).
So what magic are you in Zambia going to work on? The PF have spent the money on development projects and they have been doing the right thing to invest in infrastructure.
