Zambian Finance Minister Emmanuel Kasonde said on Sunday his country was preparing to diversify its economy away from its troubled mining industry to agriculture and tourism.
Kasonde said the mining sector faced major problems with the impending withdrawal of global mining giant Anglo American Corporation from its Konkola Copper Mines.
”We certainly have to diversify from copper production to agriculture and other areas that will bring about economic growth. We can longer depend on copper,” Kasonde said.
Zambia, an impoverished southern African nation of 11-million people, earns three quarters of its foreign exchange through export of metals, mainly copper and cobalt.
Citing low global copper prices, Anglo announced in January it was pulling out of its troubled Zambian mining venture.
”There was high copper production in France and Britain in the past and that is no longer the case…So the best is to start diversifying our economy, and there are many areas that can bring economic growth,” Kasonde said.
Kasonde spoke as delegates began gathering in the town of Kitwe, 400 kilometres north of the capital Lusaka, for a three-day conference on diversifying Zambia’s economy, which will start on Monday.
”Zambia must definitely diversify its economy,” Chileshe Mulenga, executive director of the Institute for Economic and Social Research in the capital Lusaka, told Reuters.
”It is one thing to say you want to diversify and another to actually diversify. Zambia must first put in place infrastructure that would have to support small and medium-scale businesses and even agriculture,” Mulenga said.
Mulenga said institutional reforms on land allocation must immediately be undertaken to attract direct foreign investment.
The World Bank’s country manager for Zambia, Laurence Clarke, told Reuters Zambia needed to strengthen corporate governance to make meaningful gains from diversification.
President Levy Mwanawasa in March said poor corporate governance and corruption were increasing the cost of doing business. Mwanawasa has said there would be zero tolerance for corruption under his administration.
The World Bank has helped Zambia to mobilise experts from Malaysia, Thailand, South Africa, Botswana, Mauritius to make presentations on how their economies have diversified. – Reuters