Diversifying Zambia’s Economy
with Post-Copper Era in Mind
Lubinda Haabazoka, PhD
Copperbelt University, School of Business,
Kitwe
Paper organisation
Section one – Introduction
 Section two – Background of Zambia’s
Economic Diversification Efforts
 Section three – Overview of Zambian
Economy
 Section four – Justification for Urgent
Economic Diversification
 Section five - Recommendations
 Section six - Conclusions

Introduction

Economic Diversification means introducing a wider and more diverse
array of sources of wealth, income, government revenues, export receipts
and employment generation.

Most developed countries like the United Kingdom and USA have made
their economies very competitive through economic diversification.

Even industrialized countries like Russia, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait,
who depend mostly on commodity exports for foreign exchange income,
are also diversifying their economies by developing very competitive
manufacturing and tourism industries.

Unfortunately, Zambia like many developing African countries depends on
the export of mineral resources as a source of income.

This has led to poor economic performance due to underdevelopment of
other sectors of the economy and fluctuations in commodity prices.

This paper therefore outlines Zambia’s economic diversification record,
emphasizes the need to diversify Zambia’s economy before finally offering
recommendations on how best to speed up economic diversification.
Background of Zambia’s Economic
Diversification Efforts
Current Economic Diversification Strategies
Overview of Zambia’s economy
Zambia’s Copper Dependency
Zambia’s Copper dependency
Structure of Zambia's public
revenue
Structure of Zambia's public
revenue
Justification for Urgent Diversification
of Zambia’s Economy






Increased unemployment level.
Copper forecast is that the life span of mines on the
Copperbelt will end in a few years from now.
Effects of resource curse will get worse. Meaning that readily
availability of revenue from copper has made the government
too complacent to improve other ways of generating
revenue.
Zambia’s economy suffers each time there is an external
shock to the copper industry (e.g. early- to- mid 1970s, late
1990s to early 2000s, 2008- 2009.
Expanding human settlement into the copper mining areas
implies that even if copper is not exhausted, it would not be
possible to produce it.
A lot of layed off workers are still on the Copperbelt
because of house empowerment.
Recommendations
Reduction of PAYE so as to stimulate
consumption
and
also
promote
entrepreneurship
 Proper tax administration in the mining
industry
 Creation of a copper stabilization fund
whose main aim will be to cushion any price
reduction in metal prices and also to provide
for reserves for future generations

Algorithm of the organisation of the Economic
diversification fund
Thank you for the attention!!!