By Potpher Mbulo
Zambia is greatly endowed with minerals, fertile land and fresh water yet it is gifted with bad culture. Zambia in the pre-colonial days experienced mining activities at minimal scale, subsistence farming and fruit gathering. My interest is fruit gathering which inculcated a lazy culture because things come on a silver plate. Adverse conditions are what shake people out of their comfort zone.
As fate would have it then come colonialization that taught Zambians to get educated for white-collar jobs. There was no deliberate policy to insure self-employment for school leavers. This developed unhealthy culture of job seekers. As a matter of fact stigmatization of people who wanted to venture into business upon finishing school was such that these people were viewed as school failures. From psychology of deindividuation in the mines where leadership was dominated by whites, we also learn that Africans believed that big businesses could only be run by whites. To date the inferiority complex still lingers in many citizens. Little wonder that entrepreneurship is not proficient in such an environment where individuals deindividualise themselves.
After colonialization come KK. Alas, inherent laziness culture of the pre-colonial days was gladly welcomed and enhanced by KK’s socialist policies in form of economic handouts. It’s no surprise that the following statistics are consistent with our bad culture. I mean when I look at the following statistics of world ranking of GDP per capita of some sampled years as seen below:
# 59 Zambia: $231.67 per capita 1964
# 70 Zambia: $404.91 per capita 1972
# 102 Zambia: $640.97 per capita 1980
# 148 Zambia: $391.81 per capita 1991
# 158 Zambia: $333.88 per capita 1996
# 159 Zambia: $315.45 per capita 1998
# 123 Zambia: $919.50 per capita 2006
# about 109 Zambia: $1409.50 per capita 2010
I would say the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as is a value of all final goods and services produced within a nation in a given year, has little or nothing to do with the standard of living of the people in Zambia. Since independence, nothing much has changed in terms of the standard of living of the Zambians except for sanitation, literate levels and perhaps medical services right up to 1991. For some of us who lived under KK’s era, at the pick of his performance in terms of GDP in 1980, the standard of living of the Zambians was far greater than it is now despite that the current GDP is higher. This can be attributed to KK’s policies of free education and health services which regrettably is not sustainable in a long run as history the world over has proved otherwise. But if you look at the period 2006 to 2010 there is virtually no change in these aspects that can much up to the corresponding positive change in GDP. Therefore as a layman, I will say, GDP is not a good measure for the economic wellbeing of an average Zambian. A bigger chunk of the money is in the hands of a few individuals and some of it is actually a direct donor input and indirectly debt relief.
Talk about debt, donors argue that although balance-of-payment are not the answer to Zambia's long-term debt problems, it will in the short term provide the government some breathing room to implement further economic reforms. However, although we have heard that balance of payment is donor funded, we should not be fooled or mistaken by verbiage. There is no donating here. The thing to lament about this mechanism is that to finance debt payment, the government borrows more to pay debt and its interest. What results is more-less like drilling another hole in the boat in order to drain out the water. The conclusion is that a country sinks deep into the savaging waters of endemic debt. Only wealth-creation can and should address the debt problem.
The reality on the ground is that more than 80% of Zambians live below the poverty datum line. It’s no surprise that the GDP is increasing in the light of high copper output and prices. But a pathetic tax system and low wages enables mining firms not to significantly add wealth to this country in terms of improving standards of living of the citizens. This country can do better with the current economic conditions but bad policies waste the opportunities of our prime time of today. Little wonder swings in microeconomics hardly affect a common man. I mean the price of copper on which the Zambian economy is over-dependent has experienced its customary wild swings, plunging at the onset of the global recession in 2008 before recovering close to previous levels with very little impact on a common man. While you might argue that this setback was countered by excellent harvests of the staple maize crop in 2009 and 2010 but at what cost of a peasant farmer when there has not been significant improvement of agriculture market? What value is there to write home about as far as the peasant farmer is concerned? We seem to be good at preaching mathematics at macroeconomic level yet the algebra of what it costs to meet the average and modest domestic needs of a common Zambian are neglected.
The best economic policies are those that target and seek to improve the wellbeing of the middle income group. If you target the lower income group you’ll tend to fall into socialistic approach full of handouts, and we need not to go there again as we have had enough lessons with KK’s failed state-run enterprises. On the other hand, If you target the upper class, undoubtedly, you will be highly capitalistic which tends to alienate high GDP values from a common man and that is what I feel we are currently doing. A balance is to target the middle group whose earning can trickle down to other income groups. The easiest way to do this is to focus on entrepreneurship, revisit our tax system and minimum wages so that such instruments can increase the purchasing power of the citizens. We have to come strong on value addition to goods and services produced in this country and create jobs in so doing. Underutilization of human resources is perhaps the greatest factor contributing to Zambia’s underdevelopment. Without the human element, all other resources like capital, land and nature cannot be of any use. However human resource can only be effective if and only if it is provided with technique and skills to do so. These have to be relevant to entrepreneurship. In this light also we can make sure we also make efforts first to satisfy our domestic market. Timber and minerals are being looted out of this country and foolish enough we are proud to add this loot to GDP. Imagine if we were to do the right things, how much more could we improve our miserable lives in this rich country which has poor policies?
This country is rich and I wouldn’t be surprised that favorable GDP values will continue to show yet the majority of the people will remain wallowing in abject poverty. Building confidence in the people and making them believe in themselves and think innovatively is not an easy task. It requires a holistic approach to unlearn the core values of society. This can be done if we make a policy to use schools, churches and the media. And what is this big military army doing? Don’t resize it but make it productive. ZNS is doing the right thing but there is great room for improvement. How I wish Zambia Army Ground Forces and ZAF would be streamlined for production in the absence of war. We need to emphasize on efficiency and effectiveness and thereby achieving efficacy. We need to revolutionize our way of doing things.
