Journalist and Human Rights activist Laura Miti recently wrote about some unfortunate experiences her newly established small restaurant has faced with the police. In relating her infuriating ordeal, she also touched on the heavy cost of doing business in Zambia. “Take Ipesheni [the restaurant],” she wrote on her popular Facebook page, “we have made sure we have paid the crazily expensive fees a business needs to be fully compliant in Lusaka.”

At the end of her post, she re-emphasizes that painful point: “I will say it again – it is very difficult to make honest money in Zambia. The legal requirements to operate are already laborious and, as said above, punishingly costly. Then we must add the police being random. I’m sure other establishments suffer other authorities.”

Politicians and technocrats keep coming up with all kinds of convoluted “national development plans” that they sincerely think will one day cure Zambia’s chronically ailing economy. Zambia is now on the 8th national development plan, with absolutely nothing to show for it, because these “plans” are actually useless, if not destructive. We have been doing them since the time of Kenneth Kaunda when he copied them from the former communist Soviet Union, without stopping to ask whether they ever produced any meaningful improvements in people’s livelihood.

The only real secret to “development” has always been hidden in plain sight: reduce the costs of doing business and the economy will boom. That’s all. It doesn’t matter if it’s small businesses or big businesses, the government must not make business harder than it already is by having so many costly regulations, fees and taxes. On top of this, they even decide to add other random costs like irrational policing of these small companies that are trying hard to just stay afloat. It’s almost as if they are trying hard to keep the country poor!

President Hichilima, as a businessman, already knows these things, so we were hoping he would do better than his predecessors. So why has he not aggressively implemented an environment that is pro-business?

All our politicians fall into the same trap once they get into power: they start trying to directly help people, instead of doing it indirectly by letting businesses grow so that they can be the ones to employ them and improve their lives. A small restaurant might not employ too many people, but if the owner sees that they are making a lot of money, they will be motivated to open another one, and then another one, or at least to grow the size of the restaurant by introducing more ideas to win new customers. Whether they are mainly doing this for profit or because they just enjoy serving people, it will result in more and more people getting jobs – real jobs that actually make money in the economy. The suppliers they are buying their vegetables and chickens from will also make more money, and end up hiring more people to help them. That’s the only formula for true economic growth.

This is a much more effective way than trying to give people government jobs. You can keep boasting about hiring 10 thousand new teachers or nurses when the economy could have produced 1 million jobs if you had just allowed businesses to operate freely and cheaply.

Many people feel guilty when they oppose government programs that give people free government jobs or “social cash transfer” or “CDF” or “cash for work” or “cash for pregnancy” or many other economically useless programs. You feel guilty opposing such programs because you sound like you don’t care for the suffering people. And yet those same policies of expensive expenditures are the ones that keep the same people poor. To fund those programs you need to keep the taxes (or “fees”) high. And by keeping taxation high, you are just making it more impossible for more people to become employed.

Abolish all these harmful “social” programs and unleash the businesses to be the ones to solve the problem of poverty, by unburdening them from all the unnecessary costs, including the invisible tax of impetuous policing.

Recent Articles from Author:

Hichilema Should Have Implemented Sata’s Idea

President Hichilema is a Good Man, But His Policies Can’t Fix the Economy

Should Zambia Really Return to Socialism?

The author, Chanda Chisala, is the Founder of Zambia Online and Khama Institute. He is formerly a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University and Visiting Scholar to the Hoover Institution, a policy think tank at Stanford. You can follow him on X @chandachisala.

The PF’s Silence on “Why Me” Exposes Their Toxic Politics – Zambians Must Rise Against Them

By Cletus Muchinga

Zambians are witnessing one of the most shameful displays in our political history: the rise of a reckless, insult-driven figure masquerading as the “voice of the opposition.” The individual calling himself “Why Me” (https://www.facebook.com/reel/607147175474735) has become a symbol of moral decay, hurling despicable insults at the Head of State. But let us be clear this is not about politics. This is about the collapse of decency, the celebration of vulgarity, and a deliberate attempt to provoke the government into a reaction, all so the opposition can play the victim.

What is even more alarming is the deafening silence from the Patriotic Front (PF), a party that claims to be ready to lead this nation. Where is Edgar Lungu? Where is Given Lubinda? Where is Emmanuel Mwamba? Their refusal to condemn this madness speaks louder than any words ever could. It confirms what many of us have long suspected: the PF thrives on chaos, thrives on division, and thrives on deception.

This so-called “Plan B” of the PF is not about offering Zambians a better future. It is a deliberate strategy to sow discord and create unrest. They want Zambians to believe that the UPND government is oppressive, yet they sit back and allow a deranged individual to insult the President in the most degrading manner. This is not democracy. This is not leadership. This is a cheap, dirty, and desperate ploy to regain power at any cost.

If Edgar Lungu truly considers himself a leader, why has he not publicly denounced this disgraceful behavior? Why has he not distanced himself from this madness? The answer is simple: this is the PF’s brand of politics. They operate like a shadowy cabal pretending to be respectable in public while secretly fueling chaos behind the scenes.

Zambians must not be fooled. If the PF is comfortable being represented by a vulgar, unhinged individual like “Why Me,” what kind of leadership do they intend to bring? Is this the caliber of opposition we should take seriously? If they cannot even control one of their own, how can they claim to be fit to govern this nation?

To the youth of Zambia, especially the Gen Z generation, I say this: do not fall for their tricks. Do not be swayed by their manufactured victimhood. Instead, focus on the tangible progress being made under the UPND government economic stability, infrastructure development, and the restoration of Zambia’s dignity on the global stage.

Let us not forget: the PF had ten years in power, and what did they leave us? A mountain of debt, a culture of lawlessness, and a legacy of corruption. Now, they seek to return by disguising their chaos as opposition. Zambians must reject them outright.

Edgar Lungu, Given Lubinda, and Emmanuel Mwamba must be held accountable. If they cannot publicly disown this rogue individual, no sane Zambian should ever trust them with power again.

The role of the opposition is to provide alternative solutions, not to promote vulgarity and hate. If the PF cannot grasp this basic principle, then their dreams of returning to power should remain exactly that a fantasy.

Zambians, it is time to wake up. The PF is not an alternative; they are a disaster waiting to happen. Let us stand together and reject their toxic politics once and for all. Our nation deserves better

By Edward Chisanga

We listen to political proclamations of African leaders about their so-called economic, social and political achievements. We record them and make assessments against statistics to find variances and later, either confirm or point out disharmonies and leave outcomes to the people to make judgement. In this article, we focus on economic achievements. This time, we followed Ghana and its immediate former Head of State, President Akufo – Addo who stepped down last year after finishing his full two terms of office.

HIS ACHIEVEMENT PROCLAMATIONS
• “I’m proud of my achievements as president.”
• Highlighting his administration’s significant achievements,
• He emphasized the transformative impact of his policies on Ghana’s socio-economic landscape.
• One of the hallmarks of his administration, according to Akufo-Addo, is the substantial progress in economic growth and stability.”
• Ghana has played a pivotal role in diversifying the economy, thereby reducing Ghana’s dependence on cocoa and gold exports.”
That’s what former president of Ghana, Akufo-Addo says, and wants Ghanaians, Africans and the world to hear. Yes, former president Akufo-Addo strongly believes that among other things, he must be remembered by the so-called achievements manifested in his vainglorious proclamations, that only he and his courtiers saw.
He’s not alone. Many other African presidents share the same inflated sense of value. So, President Addo may have left his presidency and living his post-presidency with extreme gayety, thinking the people he left behind too, were and believed him. They did not. Not all Ghanaians are moronic or disrelish to numbers. For some, their life is in them. Using numbers, they, together with us tracked this performance, using key words, phrases or sentences in his statements.

Transformative

We began with the term, ‘Transformative,’ and found that it means, “Causing a major change to something or someone, especially in a way that makes it or them better.”
Remember, many African Heads of State use this term, often incorrectly. According to Ghanaians, most families continue to eat less than three meals a day. In July 2023, a World Bank Ghana economic update report stated, “The World Bank says some 850, 000 were pushed into poverty in 2022 because of rising prices of goods and services. The inflationary pressures, the Bank said, had led to a deterioration in living standards and ultimately, worsened and food insecurity among Ghanaian households.”

We can look for more information to show that Mr. Addo’s proclamation was nothing but mockery to most Ghanaians. Akufo-Addo served as President from 2017 – 2025.

Substantial progress in economic growth and stability
We used Unctadstat statistics to assess economic performance of Ghana using the period 2017 – 2025, when he was in charge. Our finding is self-explanatory in Figure 1 shown below. When he took office in 2017, you can see that GDP growth stood at 8 per cent but faced an episode of drastic contraction going below 1 per cent in 2020. Although improvement in growth can be seen thereafter, the period 2021-2023 experienced sharp contraction going to less than 3 per cent. That’s not ‘substantial progress in economic growth and stability,’ is it? I don’t have data for the period 2023-2024 when he left office. But surely, one year would not have made a significant difference from his past trend of dwindling growths.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is an important input to the ongoing economy’s development agenda of a country. It flourishes under a robust local private sector that can partner it. Unfortunately, many African countries like Ghana are failing to attract robust FDI. For President Addo, he began well with inward FDI of about $3.5 billion when he took over office.

He even managed to raise it to close to $4.0 billion the following year. However, since then, FDI began to plummet, even down to less than $1.5 billion in 2023. I doubt if he may have made substantial increase in his last year of 2024 as I have no data. That’s not substantial progress in economic growth and stability, is it?

Ghana has played a pivotal role in diversifying the economy

Well, there’s several ways to measure diversification of the economy. One way is to use the indicator of proportion of exports of manufactured goods to the world in total. In other words, we found Ghana’s total exports of all goods products to the world. Out of this, we measured the share of exports of manufactured goods in that total.
Our finding is seen in Figure 3 below, where we clearly note that the share of exports of manufactured goods shown in the last line if far less than the line above. Share of manufactured goods is less than or exactly 10 per cent compared with about 90 per cent for primary commodities. Does this confirm the statement, “Ghana has played a pivotal role in diversifying the economy? Perhaps diversification is elsewhere.

There’s another way of diversifying. Even without numbers, it may be true that Ghana has diversified its export markets, from the traditional West to China for its minerals. But this diversification has not been matched with export product diversification, like into manufactured goods.

Conclusion

We’re contemplating asking President Trump of the U.S. to extend his model of using the Ovall Office meetings with African leaders, open to the public instead of closed sessions. We’ll encourage him to invite African leaders to the Ovall Office to hold conversations where he can dialogue with them using public broadcast. He’ll ask them tough questions and provide his own answers to their points. This is because in Africa, they don’t give us chance to dialogue with them. They only want us to listen to their stories. If you ask them what they don’t want to hear, they consider you an enemy. They’ll not do that to President Trump.
Mr. Trump, please accept our invitation. After all, you’ve the right to do so because, these African leaders are aid – dependent on your country.