Natural Resources

Zambia hosts the mighty Mosi-U-Tunya (Victoria) Falls, several national parks and game reserves providing one of the best safaris and game viewing places in the world. Zambia also hosts Africa’s greatest wonder of man and third largest manmade lake in the world, the Lake Kariba and its dam. The available water in Lake Kariba can sustain the Mighty City of London for over three hundred years. This means Zambia is a very rich country though most of its inhabitants are poor. Zambia is truly the real Africa!

However, there is something disheartening about Zambia. This is the unpalatable and inhuman conditions of poverty in which the Zambian people have found themselves. At the close of 2007, at least 68% of Zambians were surviving on less than $1 (dollar) per day. In urban areas poverty levels are about 34% and are as high as 85% in rural areas. The poverty conditions of Zambia especially adversely affect the disadvantaged groups which are mostly youths, women and children.

The Zambian Youth

The Zambian Youth do not only represent the future hope of this great country but also cover around 65% of the Zambian population. Though the Zambian youth represent the largest percentage of the country’s population, at least 70% percent of them are unemployed. This has led dozens of them into street vending, selling in markets, bus conducting, etc. The rough conditions in which the Zambian youths find themselves have provoked some to venture into entrepreneurship activities. According to the National Youth Policy, a youth is defined as a male or female person who is between 15 and 25 years of age. While this may not be the best definition of youth, the definition has been found to be ideal in terms of mobilizing support for the most disadvantaged group in society.

I want to look at youth in a broader sense. In this case the youth are those who are young - whose strength and vigor are at their maximum. Hence, I suggest that a youth is any male or female who is between 13 years and 35 years of age. A youth is somebody who is in the prime of his or her life. Most of the Zambian youth are either in school or are school drop outs.

 
Challenges Facing Zambian Youth

 
Mostly, youths are challenged by so many questions surrounding their future. Zambia has just three public universities: which are the University of Zambia (UNZA), the Copperbelt University (CBU) and the newly found Mulungushi University (MU) which was converted from the National College. There are also a number of private universities that have been recently set up in the country though the colossal amounts needed to earn an education in these institutions tend to be too hostile for the poor youths. Government and the private sector own a number of vocational and technical training and business colleges across the country.

The Zambian youth which is the most productive age group in the country faces the most devastating impact of HIV/AIDS at over 16% percent (this statistic covers the 15 to 49 years age group). The urban youths are more threatened by HIV/AIDS than the rural youths. As much as 35% of the 15 to 49 year-age group in urban areas is believed to be living with the virus. Life expectancy in Zambia is alarmingly at 36 years for women and 37 years for men. Zambia is a country of contrasts. The continuum of the possible riches of Zambia and the poverty of the Zambian people is intolerable

Zambia’s Potentials Outweigh the Problems

Zambia like other African countries clearly demonstrates what can be described as the “paradox of plenty.” This is so because the country’s wealth does not much up with the people’s poverty. Zambia is on one hand among the richest countries in Africa in terms of abundant natural resources, vast arable lands, colossal water facilities, beautiful tourism sites and safaris, great mineral wealth and gregarious people of great abilities who live together in peace, love and harmony. However, on the other hand Zambia is among the continent’s poorest countries in terms of the living standards of its people. Zambians are extremely poor in spite of their home land being blessed by God with so much mineral wealth. The people of Zambia suffer high levels of poverty, mortality rates, poor sanitation, scarce health services, limited education opportunities and much more. The Question that must confront every well thinking Zambian is not why is Zambia poor because Zambia is a very rich country. The question we must all ask ourselves is “Why are Zambians poor in the midst of plenty?”

The Paradox of Plenty

There is a proverb that says, “A fool dies of thirsty in the midst of plenty water.” Zambians die of poverty and other curable and preventable diseases in the midst of plenty. Why? About 44 years since independence Zambia still faces a lot of developmental challenges. Zambia has in the recent past made progressive economic strides and advanced in its efforts to meet some of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. With about 8 years remaining before the targeted period in which to achieve the MDGs dawns, Zambia is in the mixture of the midst of promise and difficulty. For example Zambia has recently managed to reduce its inflation from about 17% to at least 8% in the last 7 years. With new copper mining ventures such as the Kansashi and Lumwana Mines in North Western Province, Zambia has managed to grow its exports and the Zambian currency has remained stable at between 3500 kwacha and 4000 kwacha to 1 US dollar. In fact the kwacha is currently selling at not more than 3500 to a US dollar. After reaching the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) completion point 3 years ago, Zambia’s external debt has drastically dropped from 7.2 billion US dollars to only 635 million US dollars. Zambia is no longer burdened with paying huge amounts of money for debt servicing.

Too Fabulous, Far Less Impact

However, the above economic indicators are a mockery to the Zambian people because they are far from positively impacting the average Zambian. With the above economic indicators one expects Zambia’s social conditions to be more bearable. It is shocking to note that while we may boast of the single digit inflation and stable currency, Zambia’s prices of basic goods continue to rise. For example, the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection (JCTR) Basic Foods Basket indicated that an average Zambian family of six people needed about K1, 550, 700 to meet monthly basic requirements in April 2007 but a mesmerizing K1, 939, 800 was needed for the same purpose in a family of six in April 2008. A 25 Kg of maize meal which provides Zambia’s staple food (nshima) is currently selling at K55, 000 from K15, 000 eighty years ago. Transportation costs both for short and long distance have kept increasing. Health services and education are not as easy to attain. Life has continued to be more and more unbearable for an average Zambian. The gap that exists between the rich and the poor in Zambia is very worrisome. About 6% of Zambians possess the wealth that if equally distributed to the poor can meet all their basic needs with surplus. What is even more disheartening is that most of these extremely rich persons in the country are those holding public office. To be a political leader in Zambia is perceived more as a way to enriching oneself than to provide efficient and beneficial service to the people. The governors in Zambia are extremely rich while the governed are in abject poverty. Truly, Zambia is a country of contrasts.

 
A Human Face Concept

There is an urgent need to make the conditions in which our people live more human. Development must now be understood in terms of moving from less human conditions to more human conditions if we are going to make any meaningful progress in bettering the conditions in which our people live. It is embarrassing that a nation of so much great potential of wealth can have its people living in such extremely inhuman conditions

Zambia has got vast potentials that definitely outweigh the problems. The problems of Zambia are neither impossible nor improbable if the people of Zambia especially the youth can engage into resilient action to make Zambia a better country for every Zambian. As Peter Henriot puts it, “The challenge for all of us is how to effectively and equitably apply the potentials to the problems” (Henriot: 2007). Zambia will not develop without developing its leadership and democratic structures. Sustainable development requires visionary leadership. This means the emerging leaders are faced even with a greater task to build a new nation whose development efforts shall be aimed at transforming the lives of the poor people of this nation and lifting them from terrible conditions of poverty to a life of dignity. IT IS POSSIBLE TO BUILD A BETTER ZAMBIA!!!

The African Renaissance and Youth Action

The Bemba People of Northern Zambia have a wise saying which says: “Imiti ikula e mpanga” literary meaning small trees make a forest. A forest without shrubs has no future, so is a nation which does not invest in its future - the Youth. There is a call from the post colonial- post apartheid African leaders for a rebirth of the African soul. This is sometimes described as an ideology or a philosophy but is largely a political revolution emerging from a belief that it is not possible to sought out Africa’s problems without engaging Africans in dealing with their own problems and defining their own future. Hence, a general call has been to provide African solutions to African problems.

The movement is called the African Renaissance. It started soon after Apartheid in the mid 1990s and many African leaders have been proponents of this ideology. Front runners of this movement are South African President Thabo Mbeki, Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, and many other African leaders. I have always argued that the African Renaissance should not be viewed just as a political ideology; it must be viewed in terms annihilating the dehumanizing tool called Acquired Income on Dependence (Aid) that causes Acquired Income on Dependence Syndrome (AIDS) in Africa and engaging an African mind into action. This calls for the development of African leadership and raising a people with renewed and liberated minds. The minds of the emerging leaders must experience a mental emancipation and stop looking west whenever there is a challenge in Africa. The ambitions advanced through the African Renaissance have led to the establishment of institutions like the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). The main argument under these institutions is Africa has become of age; therefore, she must be urgently weaned from dependence syndrome.

The observation made by Franz Fanon must be taken seriously: “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it… the people of Africa are determined to fulfill their mission of making the 21st century an African century, the century of the African Renaissance.”

The youth of Africa and Zambia in particular are the hope in which the accomplishment of the vision of the African Renaissance lies. I have always viewed dependence syndrome as the greatest cancer of Africa. Because of this cancer, Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair may be justified when he claims that Africa is the wound of the world. The only questions he and other former colonial masters of Africa have deliberately never wanted to either ask or answer are: Who wounded the African continent? And who shall heal this wound? The Bembas have a saying that “uupamfiwe eulwa ne chibi” meaning that the one it pains and provokes is the one who must act. It is the task of the African people, especially the youth to look seriously into the solutions for the problems facing the African continent. It cannot be ignored that our former colonial masters have contributed greatly to the predicaments that Africa has found itself in. Their maneuvers during the post-colonial period through the Breton Woods Institutions have not yielded much benefit to the people of Africa. Mostly the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) masterminded by the former colonial masters through the IMF and the World Bank have been the main contributors in condemning the people of Africa into embarrassing inhuman conditions of poverty. The SAPs embraced by the Zambian government in the early 1990s led to the fall of over 100 Zambian manufacturing industries and reduced Zambia to a dumping place for foreign made goods. The poor are growing poorer and poorer. The poverty levels which were around 58% in the early 1990s have now been rotating between 65% and 75% in the early years of the 21st century.

A Lesson Never to be Repeated

This is enough lesson to both the Zambian and African youth that unless we act, no one will act for us. Who shall heal the African wound? The answer is simple, Africans themselves shall heal the African wound, and the greatest physician of the 21st century who shall heal this wound is the youth.

If we shall build a better Zambia, the Zambian youth must graduate from the dependence syndrome and chose to immerse themselves into fruitful action. The youth must graduate from the cadre mentality of stone throwing and being cheaply used by some political elements to cause anarchy. If the youth fight they must fight for a better cause, not because they belong to different political parties. The emerging leaders must introduce a new culture of leadership in Africa that will be instrumental in building a new Africa. The youth, wherever they are, must engage their minds into looking for solutions to the social vices confronting the continent today. This will help them plan for a better tomorrow.

The youth can be relied upon for building a better Zambia. History speaks volumes about how much the youth have always been pragmatic in change. The youth have vigor, energy, power, zeal and they are not rigid to change. The youth know how to act and bring change, and they are the greatest and best agents of change. The youth make things happen. Indeed, the youth shall always keep the Zambian and African hope alive.

Vision 2030 Emerging Leaders Action

In 2006, the Zambian Government led by His Excellence, Dr. Levy Patrick Mwanawasa, SC (May His Soul Rest In Peace) made an aspiration to make Zambia a prosperous middle capital income by 2030. The late President Mwanawasa launched the Vision 2030 during the official opening of Parliament in 2006. The Vision 2030 outlines three scenarios outlining development options, namely the baseline, the preferred and the optimistic. The preferred scenario aims to attain and sustain annual real growth of 6% between 2006 and 2010, 8% between 2011 and 2015, 9% between 2016 and 2020, and 10% between 2021 and 2030. The vision 2030 is founded on seven key basic principles. These include: (i) sustainable development, (ii) upholding democratic principles (iii) respect for human rights (iv) fostering family values, (v) a positive attitude towards work (vi) peaceful co-existence and (vii) upholding good traditional values/private public partnerships. By 2030 Zambians aspire to live in a strong and dynamic middle-income industrial nation that provides opportunities for improving the well being of all, embodying values of social economic justice. The Vision 2030 is a product of a nation-wide consultative process involving various stake holders who included traditional leaders, civil society, government departments, co-operating partners and the ordinary citizens.

Vision 2030 represents Zambia’s hope and dedication in providing homemade solutions to Zambia’s social-economic problems. However, this vision will just remain an aspiration that will achieve very little, if not nothing, if the youth are not made to understand this vision. When God gave a vision of Israel’s future to Habakkuk he instructed him to write it on the tablets, make it plain for all to read and understand so that he who reads could run with it. It is one thing to have a vision but to communicate it efficiently especially to the right people is another. It is undeniable that if the youth are not made to be front runners in bringing the aspirations of Vision 2030 to fruition, this great vision will just be another paper of big and good plans that only rot in the archives without producing any tangible results. Without vision people perish, I want to add that without right people in place for action the vision perishes. The great Nelson Madiba Mandela once stated that “vision without action is dead and action without a vision is confusion.”

I have taken time in the recent past to ask youths how much they know about Vision 2030. The people I have asked are those I have met in public buses, church gatherings, and other social functions. Most of these young people range from high school pupils to university students. The results are embarrassing. The only youths who have provided a satisfactory answer to the question of understanding Vision 2030 are the members of the Power Dunami Youth Forum (PDYF). Most young people claim that they have never even heard about it while others say it is something to do with politics. Every time I am confronted with such ignorance from the youth who are supposed to be the epoch of Zambia’s future, I ask myself a question but “to whom does this vision belong? Who is to blame for this ignorance? Who will bring the Vision 2030 to its realization if not the youth?” The problem of Zambian youths is that their leadership is always postponed to tomorrow. This tomorrow has often times never matured to today. That is why I am more comfortable with a view that the youth are leaders of their own generation. Youths are supposed to be in the forefront in building a better Zambia. The youth must be allowed to critique and scrutinize the Vision 2030 and be engaged into militant action that will make the realization of this vision by 2030 possible. I want to suggest that Vision 2030 without youth action is dead and youth action without Vision 2030 is confusion.

The Power Dunami Youth Forum (PDYF) recently sat down and resolved to act and act now so that Vision 2030 will not just end like a long night dream that results from a strenuous day of various activities. PDYF wants to see a Zambia that shall live the aspirations of Vision 2030 when this year dawns. Therefore, the PDYF has come up with a youth action strategy on Vision 2030 called Vision 2030 Emerging Leaders Action. This action will have three phases that include research, awareness and advocacy. Vision 2030 Emerging Leaders Action is a call to the youth for action and action now. Zambia’s economic recovery has been long overdue and the days of waiting for Mr. Brown and Mrs. John White to come from overseas and develop our nation are long gone. Hence, we are going to engage ourselves into a first phase research to investigate how much the young people know about Vision 2030 and what they think about it. This will inform our next step which will be to start an awareness program that shall aim to educate the youth on the aspirations of Vision 2030 and provoke them to act. We shall then begin to advocate for increased youth participation in decision making and matters of national interest. This will motivate the youth to become active participants in building a better Zambia and giving themselves a destiny. The emerging leaders are called upon to understand and embrace Vision 2030 so that it does not end where the current administration ends. If Vision 2030 is a people’s vision, emerging leaders must be in the forefront in making head ways for the accomplishment of this vision. IT IS POSSIBLE TO MAKE ZAMBIA A MIDDLE CAPITAL INDUSTRIAL NATION BY 2030 IF THE YOUTH ARE EFFECTIVELY EDUCATED ON THE IMPLICATIONS OF THIS VISION. NO PERSON WANTS TO PARTICIPATE IN A VISION HE HAS NO SENCE OF OWNERSHIP.

The MDGs and Youth Development

At the beginning of the 21st Century 183 heads of state met during the United Nations Millennium Summit and discussed how best they could resolve the rising terrible social conditions of the world. At this meeting the United Nations made what is now popularly known as the MDGs. I have preferred to describe the MDGs as the Promise of World Leaders and Rich Nations to the Poor. The MDGs themselves are simply the Millennium Development Goals. The 8 goals aspire to make the world a better home for human habitation for all by the year 2015. The MDGs are an aspiration by the world leaders through the United Nations that aim to achieve the following by 2015: reduce poverty and hunger by half, ensure all children complete primary education, increase gender equality and women empowerment, reduce child mortality rate by two-thirds, reduce maternal mortality rate by three-quarters, stem the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and build a global partnership for development.

Zambia’s progress towards the MDGs is captured in what is called the Millennium Development Goals Progress Reports. These reports contain statistics and projections of how Zambia is fairing towards the MDGs. These reports and statistics are arrived at through a broader participation of the government, the civil society and other co-operating partners. Zambia’s ability to reach the MDGs is ranging from promising to failing. For example MDG number one aims to reduce poverty by half by 2015. This means Zambia is working at reducing poverty from 58% in 1990 to 29% in 2015. At the close of 2007 at least 68% of Zambians were living below the poverty datum line with around 35% of the people living in extreme poverty. The current scenario shows that this goal is still a pipe-dream unless we, and especially the youth engage into militant action. There is a big challenge for Zambia in meeting the MDGs. However, Zambia is making steady progress on issues of gender equality, universal primary education and reducing child mortality rate. In the early 1990s 191 children out of every 1000 live births died before their fifth birthday. It is the goal of Zambia to reduce this number to 36 out of every 1000 live births by 2015. In 2004, child mortality rate had reduced to 95 out of every thousand births for the same period. This is good progress.

My question is what stake does a Zambian youth have in the MDGs? We know that by 2015 most of the Zambian youth will be in decision making positions. The economic and social challenges facing the Zambian people are greatly felt by the youth, the women and children. An average Zambian youth is both discouraged and hopeless because she feels she is living in a country without a bright future. But my take on this is who builds a bright future for a nation? If not the citizens and the leaders of that country, who will come and build it for them? The youth in Zambia are called upon to be angry and courageous in the face of adversity and the advent of hope. There is hope for Zambia if Zambians and especially the youth can act and act now.

There is need to educate the youth on the MDGs and inspire them to be active participants in building a better Zambia. A Zambia left to be built by the foreigners is no better than a colonized state. ZAMBIANS SHALL BUILD A BETTER ZAMBIA!