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Zambia’s developing international relations

‘Positive neutrality’ and global partnerships

Research paper Published 7 March 2023 ISBN: 978 1 78413 555 3 DOI: 10.55317/9781784135553

Kazungula bridge connecting Zambia and Botswana.

Christopher Vandome

Senior Research Fellow, Africa Programme

In recent years, Zambia has changed its approach to international relations. The administration of President Hakainde Hichilema, elected in August 2021, has revived the country’s relationships with key Western partners, while maintaining links with China and the wider African continent.

Zambia is central to a number of global concerns, including as a participant of the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatments; as a democratic state and potential African ally for the West; and as a valuable producer of natural resources required for the global green transition.

This paper provides an overview of the latest developments in Zambia’s international relations and explores what these might mean for the world and the people of Zambia.

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Introduction

Since his inauguration in August 2021, President Hakainde Hichilema’s foreign policy has focused on renegotiating Zambia’s significant debt burden and attracting inward investment, particularly for the country’s mining industry. This requires a careful approach that balances Zambia’s various foreign interests, especially those that concern Western nations and China.

Zambia is seeking debt relief under the G20 Common Framework – also known as the Common Framework for Debt Treatments beyond the Debt Suspension Sustainability Initiative (DSSI). The Common Framework was introduced to succeed the DSSI, which ended in December 2021 and was set up to suspend sovereign debts so that indebted countries could concentrate their resources on tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, there are persistent challenges to the process. Successful intervention requires the support of Paris Club creditors and bondholders, but these entities remain critical of the opacity of Zambia’s debt to China. Meanwhile, Beijing is concerned about the terms of a $1.4 billion IMF credit facility for Zambia and the precedent that Zambian debt restructuring may set, given China’s broader strategic interests across the region.1 In January 2023, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, and US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, travelled to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and met with President Hichilema to unlock the seemingly faltering Common Framework process. There is no consensus about which partners are delaying progress. However, at the end of the visit the IMF had reached an understanding in principle with China about a debt restructuring strategy that could help resolve Zambia’s debt crisis.2

Beyond debt sustainability, maintaining balanced international partnerships is critical for Zambia’s economic development. Foreign powers play a central role in supporting domestic infrastructure, mining investment, and health and education programmes. But the country’s colonial history has led to widespread suspicion of external influence. In the worst instances, external actors have leveraged their investments – and, at times, perpetuated corruption – to access Zambia’s strategic minerals and regional links. Maintaining broad and varied international relations can help the Hichilema administration to avoid perceptions that it has allowed Zambia’s hard-won independence to be compromised.

This paper reviews Zambia’s key international partnerships and the role and influence of foreign actors in the country. A central recommendation of the paper is that Zambia maintains its non-aligned position of ‘positive neutrality’ – which has enabled the country to proactively engage across global political divides – to continue to build a broad range of international relationships.

The paper is spilt into two sections: the first examines the external international relations and economic diplomacy of the Hichilema administration, focusing on debt negotiations and regional relations; the second section examines the influence of external actors across different sectors of the economy and civic space. The paper argues that maximizing the benefits of these partnerships and protecting against ‘malign’ interests will require clean government, effective institutions, commitment to international rules and norms, and the equitable implementation of domestic policy and regulation. This approach has the potential to give Zambia the agency to be a ‘rule-maker’ rather than a ‘rule-taker’ in its external partnerships. And, in doing so, offers an example to other African nations that are also seeking to balance their foreign partnerships and relations between divided global powers.

Box 1. Zambia’s post-independence foreign policy

Since independence, Zambia’s foreign policy has been informed by four factors: its security and geopolitical position; the personality of its leadership; ideology, particularly on independence and sovereignty; and the desire for economic development, balanced between solidarity with its neighbours and its need for external investment.

Zambia achieved independence from the UK in October 1964. By virtue of its location, it was immediately at the forefront of regional decolonization that initially took the form of newly independent white settler states, which pursued racial segregation and conducted military operations to destabilize the region. Despite Zambia’s weak economy and precarious geopolitical situation at that time, President Kenneth Kaunda and his United National Independence Party (UNIP) took principled positions on anti-colonialism and the provision of assistance to liberation movements.

Support for wars of liberation, mineral rent mismanagement, a decline in world copper prices and an increase in the cost of oil imports, all contributed to severe economic stress by the early 1980s. The pace and sequencing of structural debt adjustment programmes in the 1980s caused significant hardship, and, to this day, there is deep resentment and scepticism of the international financial institutions (IFIs). Following elections in 1991, new political leaders faced the challenge of reconciling the post-colonial legacy of an outward looking foreign policy with the imperative of promoting domestic economic development.

As an expression of its desire for self-sufficiency, economic independence and mutual economic cooperation with other countries, Zambia played a prominent role in the foundation of regional organizations, including the Southern African Development Coordination Conference in 1980, which later became the Southern African Development Community. In 1981, Zambia co-founded a larger economic partnership – the Preferential Trade Area for Eastern and Southern Africa, later renamed the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), with a secretariat in Lusaka. These blocs are important for Zambia’s regional trade, particularly in small-scale manufactured or consumer products, foodstuffs and the informal sector. However, large external markets continue to dominate bilateral trade, especially the export of mined products.

China and Russia

The history of Sino-Zambian relations dates back to China’s support for Zambian independence, which was followed by a period of political and economic assistance, primarily through infrastructure development. In 1967, Kenneth Kaunda visited China and secured support for a rail link to the Indian Ocean through Tanzania, to provide access to world markets without exports having to go through white minority-governed Rhodesia or apartheid South Africa. The TAZARA3 railway was completed in 1975, and it is still one of the largest Chinese aid projects on the continent. China has subsequently been a significant funder of other infrastructure projects and a major importer of copper products.

However, successive Zambian leaders have had to contend with balancing the macroeconomic importance of China with negative local perceptions, and the relationship with China is a domestic political issue of growing importance. Many Zambians are suspicious of, or even hostile to, Chinese enterprises, citing unfair labour practices and human rights violations. The opacity of Chinese lending and its politicization – notably links to the Zambian ruling party’s domestic campaigning – have led to severe criticism. There are also allegations from the media, civil society and competitor firms of kickbacks and inflated project costs that drive rent-seeking and cronyism.

In 2011, Michael Sata was elected president having at first campaigned on a strong anti-China position. However, his position softened once he was in office, and his administration maintained the relationship with China due to the realpolitik of international relations and the promise of Chinese finance. To many observers, Hichilema has followed a similar path – initially seeming more pro-western, but subsequently working to keep China onside.

Russia also has a history with Zambia that predates independence. The USSR was the first entity to recognize Zambia as an independent state in 1964. Since then, the two parties have cooperated on defence, health and science. In 1967, Zambia and the USSR signed the Agreement on Economic and Technical Cooperation and, in December 1971, the two parties agreed a further trade arrangement. Under the presidency of Edgar Lungu, the Patriotic Front signed a memorandum of cooperation in 2016 with the governing United Russia party to enhance political cooperation between Zambia and Russia.

IMF (2022), ‘IMF executive board approves new extended credit facility arrangement for Zambia’, press release, https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2022/08/31/pr22297-imf-executive-board-approves-new-extended-credit-facility-arrangement-for-zambia.

Mfula, C. (2023), ‘IMF’s Georgieva sees broad deal with China on debt restructurings’, Reuters, 24 January 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/imf-chief-says-its-time-creditors-restructure-zambias-debt-2023-01-24.

The Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority.

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