CAUSES OF POVERTY IN ZAMBIA

1.0              Introduction

Poverty in Zambia is more pronounced in the rural parts of the country. The Central part of the country is densely populated around the industrial belt and mines. In rural Zambia, it is estimated that 83% of the people live below the poverty line. In contrast to some of the neighboring countries, Zambia is scarcely populated. Scarcity in population is mainly pronounced in the remote regions of the eastern and the western parts of the country. In spite of all these, you would hardly understand poverty until you have a concept of Zambia as a country. Thus, Zambia could be described as:

i).         Geographical Location

Zambia is a landlocked Sub-Saharan country sharing boundaries with Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. It has a total surface area of about 752,614 square km, thus ranking among the smaller countries in South Central Africa. It lies between 8° and 18°south latitudes and

longitudes 22°and 34° east.

iii).       Natural resources

Zambia is situated on the great plateau of Central Africa. Its vegetation is mainly made up of savannah woodlands and grassland. It has a tropical climate with three distinct seasons, the cool and dry season, the hot and dry season and the hot and wet season. The country has abundant natural resources. It has five main rivers, namely Zambezi, Kafue, Luangwa, Luapula, and Chambeshi rivers. In addition to these rivers, the country also has major lakes such as Tanganyika, Mweru, Mweru WaNtipa, Bangweulu and the man-made lakes Kariba and Itezhi Tezhi. Other interesting features include the Victoria Falls, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Zambia has some of nature's best wildlife and game reserves affording the country with abundant tourism potential for earning foreign exchange. The magnificent Luangwa and Kafue National Parks have one of the most prolific animal populations in Africa. It is also endowed with various minerals and precious stones such as copper, emeralds, zinc,lead and cobalt.

iv).       Population

The population of Zambia has continued to grow. The 1980, 1990 and 2000 censuses estimated the population of Zambia to be at 5.7, 7.8 and 9.9 million respectively. However, the annual population growth rate has shown a decline from 3.1 between 1969-80, to 2.7 percent between 1980-90 and most recently 2.4 percent between 1990-2000. Population by province ranges from 1.6 million in the Copperbelt to 0.6 million in North-western. High inter-censal population growth rates have been recorded for provinces such as Lusaka (3.4 percent), Luapula (3.2 percent) and Northern (3.1 percent). Copperbelt recorded the lowest population growth rate at less than one percent. Zambia is one of the most urbanized countries in Sub-Sahara Africa with about 35 percent of the population living in urban areas. However, this is a decline from 39 percent in 1990. The percentage of urban population by province ranges from 82 and 78 percent for Lusaka and Copperbelt provinces respectively, to nine percent for Eastern province. The average population density for the country has increased from 5.4 in 1969, 7.5 in 1980, and 10.3 in 1990 to13.1 persons per square kilometre in 2000. Average density by province ranged from 64 persons per square kilometre in Lusaka province to five persons per square kilometre in North-western province.

v).        Economy

In 1991, Zambia adopted an open, private sector-led economy with minimal government control. Zambia's economy is based largely on copper and cobalt mining. Copper, which is the country's mainstay, accounts for approximately 80 percent of the country's export earnings. However, due to unfavourable copper prices since 1975, export earnings have been declining. This decline has partly been responsible for poor performance of the real sectors of the economy

that mainly rely on imported raw materials and capital items. The country's balance of payment status has mainly depended on the performance of the mining industry. Despite the additional foreign exchange earnings from non-traditional exports, the country still continues to pay more to the outside world than it earns from its exports; hence the poor balance of payments performance. During the recent drought years, food imports have continued to be high mainly due to the drop in domestic agricultural output.

In an attempt to address this problem, government adopted the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1991, with the intention of creating macro-economic stability in the economy. Measures taken include liberalization of trade, prices, interest and foreign exchange rates, removal of subsidies, privatisation, reduction in public expenditure, public sector reforms and liberalization of the marketing and pricing of agricultural produce.

Structurally, Zambia’s economy has changed little in spite of the above-implemented measures. Consistent high economic growth has been elusive. Over the period 1980 to 1990, the country’s economic growth was the second lowest in Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) after Mozambique. Over the period 1990 to 1999, it has the least average annual growth rate in the SADC region at one percent. That was also below the Sub-Saharan Africa rate of 1.4 percent. However, between 1994 and 2002, real GDP growth showed an increase from 2.2 percent in 1999 to 3.6 percent in 2000 and 4.9 percent in 2001, before declining to 3.0 in 2002. (Source: Zambia Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, 2002-2004)

viii)..    HIV/AIDS Situation in Zambia

The first HIV/AIDS case was reported in Zambia in 1985. Initially, the epidemic of HIV/AIDS cases was in the urban areas, but it soon became clear that all parts of the country were affected. According to the Zambia Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS) 2001-2002, Sixteen percent of the Zambian adult population is HIV positive. The prevalence varies by residence. The Urban HIV prevalence of about (23 percent) is twice that of the rural areas (11 percent). Provinces with prevalence levels above the national average include Lusaka (22 percent), Copperbelt (20 percent), and Southern (18 percent). The lowest prevalence levels are found in Northern province (8 percent) and North-Western province (9 percent). In terms of gender, the prevalence rates are markedly higher in women than in men in all provinces except North-Western.

1.1 Poverty

Poverty is a serious problem in Zambia. A series of national surveys conducted by the Central Statistical Office (CSO); the Social Dimensions of Adjustment Priority Surveys of 1991 and 1993 and the Living Conditions Monitoring Surveys of 1996 and 1998 provide trends in the various dimensions of poverty in Zambia. Data from these surveys show that, in general, poverty in most of the critical dimensions increased during the decade. The statistics are based on poverty lines determined by the CSO. In order to ensure comparability of results over time, these poverty lines were the same as those adopted in previous surveys in 1991, 1993 and 1996. The same basket of food has been used throughout, but the poverty lines were adjusted to 1998 prices from the 1991 prices. Similar adjustments were made for the poverty lines in 1993 and 1996,

also from the 1991 prices. (Source: Living Conditions Monitoring Survey in Zambia, 1998.)

Just as all socio-economic groups do not uniformly experience poverty, it is also not uniformly spread across the country. There is greater concentration of poverty in the rural areas than in the urban areas, and in the provinces outside the country’s main line of rail than in the provinces along the line of rail. There are also intra-provincial disparities. The distribution of Zambia’s poor by province show that the poorest provinces are Western, Luapula, Northern, Eastern and North-western.

2.0       Causes of poverty in Zambia

              Poverty in Zambia can be attributed to several factors. Zambia is isolated geographically. Due to this, Zambia's access to markets, productive assets and technical know how is limited. The agriculture sector, which was formerly taken care of, by the government, has been neglected for long. Formerly, the government suggested measures to prevent cattle from being affected by diseases. However, in our discussion, we want to base much on one factor which is the unequal distribution of resources that has also led to the 83% being less privileged.

2.1       Latent causes of poverty

Poverty in Zambia is caused by many things of which some we would consider hidden or rather latent. Of these, we would consider the question of western ‘scarcity’ against the African ‘abundance’. In the first place, we note with concern a comment made by an economist K.E. Boulding reacting to Robbins’ definition of economics with a central component of ‘scarcity’. He notes that his definition of economics is just a valuation problem which deprives economics of the right to study welfare.

Underneath such an observation could be the whole discourse of distribution, which is avoided. Richard G. Lipsey, in the footsteps of Robbins, we would say, uncritically affirms that “every nation’s resources are insufficient to produce the quantities of goods and services that would be required to satisfy all of its citizens’ wants”. The avoided question would be, ‘which wants and which citizens?’

In actual sense, the idea of scarcity of resources can be traced back to the Philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ thoughts, which express human beings as basically competitive due to their unfriendly, hostile and violent nature, combined with each one’s equal right to everything because nature has give all to all. That is why Hobbes himself writes:

For although man might say of everything, ‘this is mine’, yet he could not enjoy it, by reason of his neighbor, who having equal right and power, would pretend the same thing to be his.

For example, we would all claim Lake Victoria is for all Tanzanians, yet other powerful countries with power and right would claim the same. With some more consideration on the principle of abundance, it will be necessary to mention a problem that is always avoided when resources are at discussion; the issue of distribution. The UNDP report of 1998 showed an unnatural disproportionate of resources in the world. The summary of this report had this to say:

It is reported that 255 richest people in the world have a combined wealth of more than $1 trillion equal to the annual income of the poorest 47% of the world’s population. The then three richest people on the planet; Microsoft’s Bill Gates, the Walton family of Wall-Mart stores, and legendary investor Warren Buffet, had assets that exceeded the GDP of 48 developed countries. The combined wealth of the richest 15 people equals the production of the whole sub-Sahara Africa; that of the richest 32 was more than the GDP of Southern Asia, that of the 34 richest was more than the GDP of China. The people living in the richest countries, 20% of the world population used 45% of meat and fish, 58% of the world energy, 84% of paper, 87 % of vehicles etc.

In addition to the above, the Tanzanian weekly newspaper, The Guardian Weekly, had this to say:

….it is estimated that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women adequate food for all and also safe water for sanitation for all was roughly $40 billion year.

From our calculations we discover that this is less than 4% of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people on the planet. By taxing the revenue of these people by just 4% therefore, you would the funding needed.

There is an argument that says that resources are scarce if they are not exploited, even if they are naturally there. This argument talks about the scarcity of resources in terms of their exploitation and not in terms of their actual presence. But with the above statistics, one is able to deduce that the issue at hand is most probably, not the scarcity of resources, but its distribution of the abundant resources. To crown it all, we think this could be an issue that Martin Khor of Indonesia tried to bring at the conference on Fate and Hope of the Earth, held in Managua Nicaragua when he quoted Mahatma Gandhi, ‘There are enough resources for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed’. The issue on the abundant resources has been widely discussed by Peter Kanyandago in his article from ‘Scarcity to Abundance: Reflections on using African values to combat fraud’. He argues, and agrees with him that the African economic system is characterized by the notion of abundance availability of and accessibility of resources. In the African or rather Tanzanian worldview, there are enough resources to satisfy human needs, but this presumption is taken with an ethical proviso that resources should be shared, that is, resources are not there to be accumulated for the sake of it, but to satisfy human needs.

2.2       Salient Causes of Poverty

Getting rid of poverty in a developing country like Zambia is critical and deserves our utmost attention. This would only be realized if we note the major causes of poverty. In this way, we would be able to find solutions to the problems. Here are a few reasons why we continue having poverty in Zambia. The list is not exhaustive and each item could be a dissertation on its own.

a). Politicians/Leaders: The quality of leaders we continue to elect leaves much to be desired. Even in the business world, executives in Zambia continue to hire and promote their own in the organizations. This sidelines the most talented and leaves the mediocre to be the main decision-makers. The moment Zambia gives up the selfish ways it elects or appoints leaders we shall begin to see the difference in the way things are going to move in this country. We need quality leadership with exceptional skills and education.

b). Corruption and Abuse of Resources: There is no doubt that corruption in Zambia is a stumbling block to meaningful development in the country. As long as we continue to have government officers ask for a bribe to do business with the government we shall continue heading backwards. Many institutions in this country including, the police and the judiciary need to be freed of corrupt tendencies in order to create a favorable environment for development and get rid of poverty. The few people who run the resources in Zambia end up abusing the resources whether it is authority, moneys, or vehicles. These resources that are supposed to be channeled to develop infrastructure or educate people end up being used by those entrusted to bring the development.

c).  Bad Policies: When policies are made only in the best interest of the ruling elite or the mega foreign investors, the majority of Zambian citizens will continue living in poverty. The Zambian government has failed to create proactive policies that seek to address issues of poverty in this country. The recent closure of several companies in Zambia is a testimony of this failure. Hundreds of employees have been left jobless overnight without benefits whatsoever. The government needs to advocate for the tax-paying citizens. Policies such as mandatory setting up of employee trust funds for new companies need to be introduced. The legislature needs to work up and start addressing real issues of poverty not debating the budget to this day.

d).  Dependency Syndrome: In as much as foreign aid is essential for the development of country we should begin to look elsewhere to become more economically independent. Forty-four years after independence we are still dependent on the West for support. We can hardly stand on our own feet as a nation. It is not only the government who is diseased with begging for alms, but now many Zambians line up on street corners to ask for help.
Why not think of ways to make money as a country? I think government should be in the business of not only counting money generated from tax but also making money and devising new methods of creating a consistent cash flow. IMF and the World Bank have screwed us several times and maybe it is time we got out of those relationships and look for real relationships with mutual interests.

e).  Brain Drain: Zambia has one of the highest rates of brain drain in the world. The emigration of highly skilled personnel such as doctors, nurses, teachers, scientists, administrators, business people, etc continues year after year. With this mass departure of skill for greener pastures, who is left to do the work here in Zambia? Again, it’s back to the mediocre leaders who are running things. If many of these professionals were given incentives to stay home and work in government or develop businesses then we will be taking long strides toward poverty alleviation. The government needs to come up with incentives such as all professionals who continuously live and work in Zambia for ten years will be given a gratuity.

f).  HIV/AIDS: Like brain drain, this disease has claimed so many potential men and women of this country. If you go to any graveyard in this country and look at the tombstones, you will notice that many of the people lying there are people who were in their 30s and 40s. When a country loses so many people in their prime years, then it risks creating a generational gap that will in turn create leadership vacuum in the future. HIV/AIDS needs to be fought relentlessly in every corner of our society and by every member. We need a healthy group of citizens who can take up the leadership positioning in various circles of our society.

g).  Nepotism/Tribalism: Unfortunately, in Zambia, it’s who you know not what you know that counts. Tribalism continues to exist in the Zambian community and it is a big contribution to poverty in this country since its equation eliminates merit.When capable people are marginalized and not given equal opportunities simply because of their ethnicity then we are not helping in any way to curb poverty in this country. It is natural that people will generally favor their own kind after all blood is thicker than water. However, if for once we look past that and put the interests of the Zambian society at heart, then we will be breaking down barriers we don’t need. The best people will become presidents, managers, town clerks, and members of parliament.

h).  Illiteracy: This disease is equally a huge hindrance to development in this country. When the majority of the Zambians cannot read and write it is difficult to comprehend how we can alleviate poverty. Education is a major ingredient to national development and its importance cannot be over-emphasized. The government has done very little to make education mandatory in this country. Similarly, many Zambians lack the appetite to partake in this feast. Many give up too soon. Others have good reasons such as lack of funds, etc. Whatever the case, we need to overcome and do our best to educate ourselves formally or informally. Literacy creates confidence. The confidence needed to open your own business, the confidence needed to encourage others to go to school too, the confidence needed to run for political office and the confidence needed to aim as high as you would want to go.

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