Zambia

Zambia (/ˈzæmbiə, ˈzɑːm-/), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered to the north by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania to the northeast, Malawi to the east, Mozambique to the southeast, Zimbabwe and Botswana to the south, Namibia to the southwest, and Angola to the west. The capital city of Zambia is Lusaka, located in the south-central part of the country.

Originally inhabited by Khoisan peoples, the region experienced the Bantu expansion during the thirteenth century. Later, European explorers arrived, and by the late nineteenth century, the British Empire established control. Zambia became independent from the United Kingdom on October 24, 1964, with Kenneth Kaunda as its first president.

Zambia is rich in natural resources such as minerals and wildlife. However, many people in the country still face challenges, with nearly half of the population living in poverty. Despite these issues, Zambia plays an important role in regional cooperation, hosting organizations like the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) in its capital, Lusaka.

Etymology

Further information: Rhodesia (name)

Before becoming independent, the country now known as Zambia was called "Northern Rhodesia" from 1911 to 1964. When it gained independence from British rule in October 1964, it was renamed "Zambia". The name "Zambia" comes from the Zambezi river, which might mean "the grand river".

Geography

Main articles: Geography of Zambia and Geology of Zambia

Zambia is a landlocked country in southern Africa. It is the 39th-largest country in the world, covering 752,614 square kilometres. The land is mostly made up of high plateaus with some hills and mountains, cut by river valleys.

Zambia has two main river systems. The Zambezi River and its tributaries flow through much of the country, while the Congo River basin covers the northern part. Zambia has a tropical climate that feels milder because of its higher elevation. It has distinct wet and dry seasons, with most rain falling between November and April. The country is home to many plant and animal species, including special types of giraffes and antelope found only in Zambia.

History

Main article: History of Zambia

Prehistory

The fossil skull remains of the Broken Hill Man (also known as Kabwe Man), dated between 300,000 and 125,000 years BC, show that the area was inhabited by early humans. Broken Hill Man was discovered in Zambia in Kafwe District.

Khoisan and Batwa

Zambia was once inhabited by the Khoisan and Batwa peoples until around AD 300, when migrating Bantu began to settle the areas. The Twa people were split into two groups: the Kafwe Twa lived around the Kafue Flats and the Lukanga Twa who lived around the Lukanga Swamp. Many examples of ancient rock art in Zambia, like the Mwela Rock Paintings, Mumbwa Caves, and Nachikufu Cave, are attributed to these early hunter-gatherers.

The Bantu (Abantu)

The early history of the peoples of Zambia is deduced from oral records, archaeology, and written records, mostly from non-Africans.

Bantu origins

The Bantu people originally lived in West and Central Africa around what is today Cameroon and Nigeria. Approximately 5000 years ago, they began a millennia-long expansion into much of the continent. This event has been called the Bantu expansion; it was one of the largest human migrations in history. The Bantu are believed to have been the first to have brought iron working technology into large parts of Africa. The Bantu Expansion happened primarily through two routes: a western one via the Congo Basin and an eastern one via the African Great Lakes.

First Bantu settlement

The first Bantu people lived in villages. They lacked an organised unit under a chief or headman and worked as a community and helped each other in times of field preparation for their crops. Villages moved around as the soil became exhausted as a result of the slash-and-burn technique of planting crops. The people kept herds of cattle.

The first Bantu communities in Zambia were highly self-sufficient. Early European missionaries who settled in Southern Zambia noted the independence of these Bantu societies.

Goods traded at the major trading hub of Ingombe Ilede included fabrics, beads, gold, and bangles. The site itself is located at the confluence of the Zambezi and Lusitu rivers, making it ideal for long-distance trade. Denizens imported items from what is today southern Democratic Republic of Congo and Kilwa Kisiwani while others came from as far away as India, China and the Arab world. The African traders were later joined by the Portuguese in the 16th century.

Second Bantu settlement

The second mass settlement of Bantu people into Zambia was of people groups that are believed to have taken the western route of the Bantu migration through the Congo Basin. These Bantu people spent the majority of their existence in what is later the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Luba-Lunda states

The Bemba, along with other related groups such as the Lamba, Bisa, Senga, Kaonde, Swaka, Nkoya and Soli, formed integral parts of the Luba Kingdom in Upemba part of the Democratic Republic of Congo and have a strong relation to the Luba people.

The Luba Kingdom was a large kingdom with a centralised government and smaller independent chiefdoms. It had large trading networks that linked the forests in the Congo Basin and the mineral-rich plateaus of what is today Copperbelt Province and stretched from the Atlantic coast to the Indian Ocean coast. The arts were also held in high esteem in the kingdom, and artisans were held in high regard.

In the same region of Southern Congo, the Lunda people were made into a satellite of the Luba empire and adopted forms of Luba culture and governance, thus becoming the Lunda Empire to the south.

The Luba-Lunda states eventually declined as a result of both Atlantic slave trade in the west and Indian Ocean slave trade in the east and wars with breakaway factions of the kingdoms.

The Maravi Confederacy

In the 1200s, before the founding of the Luba-Lunda states, a group of Bantu people started migrating from the Congo Basin to Lake Mweru then finally settled around Lake Malawi. These migrants are believed to have been one of the inhabitants around the Upemba area in the Democratic Republic of Congo. By the 1400s these groups of migrants collectively called the Maravi, and most prominently among them was the Chewa people who started imitating other Bantu groups like the Tumbuka.

In 1480 the Maravi Empire was founded by the kalonga (paramount chief of the Maravi) from the Phiri clan, one of the main clans, with the others being Banda, Mwale and Nkhoma. The Maravi Empire stretched from the Indian Ocean through what today is Mozambique to Zambia and central parts of Malawi.

Mutapa Empire and Mfecane

As Great Zimbabwe was in decline, one of its princes, Nyatsimba Mutota, broke away from the state forming a new empire called Mutapa. The title of Mwene Mutapa, meaning "Ravager of the Lands", was bestowed on him and subsequent rulers.

The Mutapa Empire ruled territory between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers, in what is now Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, from the 14th to the 17th century. By its peak, Mutapa had conquered the Dande area of the Tonga and Tavara.

In the 1600s internal disputes and civil war began the decline of Mutapa. The weakened kingdom was finally conquered by the Portuguese and was eventually taken over by rival Shona states.

The Portuguese also had vast estates, known as Prazos, and they used slaves and ex-slaves as security guards and hunters.

But perhaps the most notable instance of this increased militarisation was the rise of the Zulu under the leadership of Shaka. Pressures from the English colonialists in the Cape and increased militarisation of the Zulu resulted in the Mfecane (the crushing). The Zulu expanded by assimilating the women and children of tribes they defeated, if the men of these Nguni tribes escaped slaughter, they used the military tactics of the Zulu to attack other groups.

At the end of the 18th century, some of the Mbunda migrated to Barotseland, Mongu upon the migration of among others, the Ciyengele.

Colonial period

Europeans

One of the earliest recorded Europeans to visit the area was the Portuguese explorer Francisco de Lacerda in the late 18th century. Lacerda led an expedition from Mozambique to the Kazembe region in Zambia (with the goal of exploring and to crossing Southern Africa from coast to coast for the first time), and died during the expedition in 1798. The expedition was from then on led by his friend Francisco Pinto. This territory, located between Portuguese Mozambique and Portuguese Angola, was claimed and explored by Portugal in that period.

Other European visitors followed in the 19th century. The most prominent of these was David Livingstone, who had a vision of ending the slave trade through the "3 Cs": Christianity, Commerce, and Civilisation. He was the first European to see the magnificent waterfalls on the Zambezi River in 1855, naming them the Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

Locally the falls are known as "Mosi-o-Tunya" or "thundering smoke" in the Lozi or Kololo dialect. The town of Livingstone, near the Falls, is named after him.

British South Africa Company

In 1888, the British South Africa Company (BSA Company), led by Cecil Rhodes, obtained mineral rights from the Litunga of the Lozi people, the Paramount Chief of the Lozi (Ba-rotse) for the area which later became Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia.

To the east, in December 1897 a group of the Angoni or Ngoni (originally from Zululand) rebelled under Tsinco, son of King Mpezeni, but the rebellion was put down, and Mpezeni accepted the Pax Britannica. That part of the country then came to be known as North-Eastern Rhodesia. In 1895, Rhodes asked his American scout Frederick Russell Burnham to look for minerals and ways to improve river navigation in the region, and it was during this trek that Burnham discovered major copper deposits along the Kafue River.

British colonisation

In 1953, the creation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland grouped together Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland (now Malawi) as a single semi-autonomous region. This was undertaken despite opposition from a sizeable minority of the population, who demonstrated against it in 1960–61.

Independence

The federation was dissolved on 31 December 1963, and in January 1964, Kaunda won the only election for Prime Minister of Northern Rhodesia. Soon after, there was an uprising in the north of the country known as the Lumpa Uprising led by Alice Lenshina – Kaunda's first internal conflict as leader of the nation.

Northern Rhodesia became the Republic of Zambia on 24 October 1964, with Kenneth Kaunda as the first president. At independence, despite its considerable mineral wealth, Zambia faced major challenges. Domestically, there were few trained and educated Zambians capable of running the government, and the economy was largely dependent on foreign expertise.

Kaunda's endorsement of Patriotic Front guerrillas conducting raids into neighbouring (Southern) Rhodesia resulted in political tension and a militarisation of the border, leading to its closure in 1973.

By the 1970s, Mozambique and Angola had attained independence from Portugal. Rhodesia's predominantly white government, which issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, accepted majority rule under the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979.

Economic troubles

In the mid-1970s, the price of copper, Zambia's principal export, suffered a severe decline worldwide. In Zambia's situation, the cost of transporting the copper great distances to the market was an additional strain. Zambia turned to foreign and international lenders for relief, but, as copper prices remained depressed, it became increasingly difficult to service its growing debt. By the mid-1990s, despite limited debt relief, Zambia's per capita foreign debt remained among the highest in the world.

Democratisation

In June 1990, riots against Kaunda accelerated and many protesters were killed by the regime. In 1990, Kaunda survived an attempted coup, and in 1991, he agreed to reinstate multiparty democracy, having instituted one-party rule under the Choma Commission of 1972. Following multiparty elections, Kaunda was removed from office after losing multi-party elections to Frederick Chiluba.

In the 2000s, the economy stabilised, attaining single-digit inflation in 2006–2007, real GDP growth, decreasing interest rates, and increasing levels of trade. Much of its growth is due to foreign investment in mining and to higher world copper prices.

Politics

Main article: Politics of Zambia

Zambia is a presidential representative democratic republic where the president serves as both head of state and head of government. The country has a multi-party system, with executive power held by the government and legislative power shared between the government and parliament.

Zambia became a republic in October 1964. In 2015, after the death of President Michael Sata, Vice President Guy Scott became acting president. Presidential elections held in January 2015 resulted in Edgar Lungu becoming the new president. He was re-elected in 2016, though the opposition disputed the results. In the 2021 general elections, Hakainde Hichilema won with 59% of the vote and became president.

See also: Human rights in Zambia, LGBT rights in Zambia, and Zambian nationality law

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Zambia

As of the 2022 Zambian census, Zambia's population was 19,610,769. The main ethnic groups in Zambia are Bemba, Nyanja, Tonga, and several smaller groups. Zambia is one of the most highly urbanised countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with many people living in towns and cities.

Zambia has many different languages and religions. English is the official language used in schools and government. Most people practice Christianity, though there are also Muslims, Hindus, and followers of other faiths. The country is home to people from many backgrounds, including refugees from nearby nations.

Economy

Further information: Economy of Zambia

Zambia's economy has faced challenges, with many people living in poverty. In recent years, the country has worked on improving its economy by focusing on mining, especially copper, which is a major export. Despite these efforts, issues like unemployment and corruption remain.

Mining is a key part of Zambia's economy, with copper being the most important product. The country is one of the world's largest copper producers. Besides copper, Zambia also mines gold, manganese, nickel, and various gemstones. Agriculture and tourism also contribute to the economy, with national parks and Victoria Falls being popular attractions.

Culture

Before Zambia became a modern country, people lived in separate groups, each with their own traditions. During the time of colonial rule, cities grew, and different groups began to live together, sharing and mixing their customs. Today, rural areas still hold many traditional ways of life, while cities see a blend of many cultures.

Zambia celebrates many ceremonies and rituals for special events like births, marriages, and achievements. These include both well-known national ceremonies and smaller, local ones. Traditional arts such as pottery, basket weaving, and music are important, with drums and dancing playing a big role. In cities, people also enjoy music from around the world.

Media

Main articles: Media in Zambia and Telecommunications in Zambia

Zambia’s media faces challenges because while the law allows free speech, the government often controls what is reported. Most TV and newspapers are owned by the government, and many journalists are careful about what they write.

Sports and games

Sports and games are important in Zambian culture, bringing people together for fun and skill development. Popular sports include football, athletics, and netball, as well as traditional games like nsolo and chiyenga. Football is especially loved, and Zambia’s national team has achieved notable successes, such as winning the African Cup of Nations in 2012. Other sports like rugby, boxing, and cricket are also enjoyed.

Music and dance

Music and dance are key parts of Zambian culture, with traditional instruments like drums accompanying ceremonies and celebrations. Dance helps unite people. A unique style of music called Zamrock appeared in the 1970s, mixing local sounds with influences from famous international bands.

Zamrock

Zamrock is a musical style from the 1970s that mixes Zambian traditions with sounds inspired by artists like Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath. Famous bands include Rikki Ililonga, WITCH, and Paul Ngozi.