Dear editor,
IT’s exciting to see that flights to-and-from Addis Ababa, South Africa and Dubai are full once again.
It’s also exciting to see that business and trading are picking up again.
It is clear that the wheels of the economy are beginning to quickly turn.
Hotels are full, shopping malls are filling up again and the extensive road works across the City make log-jam traffic all day.
Zambia is among African countries with the fastest growing middle-class and this shows in Lusaka.
The private construction is also booming but cement is now K100-K120!
Being in Lusaka gives you a sense of a bustling city heading into prosperity.
But we should remember that we have the poor, and the extensive developments we are seeing in the City sometimes mask this fact.
This reminds us that we must roll-out development initiatives across the country and everywhere.
We ought to support more industries and manufacturing sectors to answer to the high unemployment rate and ensure that the poverty rate keeps going down…
Our biggest potential has been agriculture, livestock and its associated sub-sectors.
We need to put our foot down and pay particular attention to this sector to realize its full potential!
Maize is not agriculture! Agriculture is far broader than that.
Mining is our biggest forex-earner for decades and we need to halt the decline and restore its high production rates and at-tract critical investment for better yields that should accrue to the country.
And we ought to resolve the mining policy including mine tax policy to determine how best we can benefit from these national assets.
We have made frequent and shifting policy changes in the last fifteen years that it portrays instability to the sector.
So it’s refreshing to be in Lusaka, but it is also an opportunity to give one stark reality of what must be done.
Amb. EMMANUEL MWAMBA
Author
