🇿🇲 Zambia

Fossil skull remains known as Broken Hill Man, or Kabwe Man, were recovered from the area and dated to between 300000 and 125000 years BC. They demonstrate that the territory was inhabited by early humans, giving Zambia one of the deepest records of human occupation in the region.

Zambia was inhabited by Khoisan and Batwa hunter-gatherers, whose rock art survives at sites such as Mwela, Mumbwa Caves and Nachikufu Cave, until around AD 300. From that point migrating Bantu began to settle the region, bringing village agriculture, cattle-keeping and iron-working technology. This displacement laid the demographic foundation of the modern nation.

In the 1200s a group of Bantu peoples left the Congo Basin, moved via Lake Mweru and settled around Lake Malawi. By the 1400s these migrants were collectively known as the Maravi, the Chewa being the most prominent among them.

Farming and iron-working communities in the Upemba area, settled since the 300s CE, developed fishing, canal and dam technologies and a diverse trade in fish, copper, iron and salt. From these communities the Luba Kingdom arose in the 14th century, with a centralised government, subordinate chiefdoms and trade networks linking the Congo Basin forests to the mineral-rich Copperbelt plateaus and both ocean coasts. Most Zambians trace ancestry to the Luba-Lunda states.

Founded when the Great Zimbabwe prince Nyatsimba Mutota broke away, Mutapa governed territory across present-day Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique from the 14th to the 17th century, exporting gold and ivory into the Indian Ocean trade via the Swahili. A Portuguese attempt to control its gold mines and ivory routes failed when the invaders succumbed to disease along the Zambezi. Internal disputes and civil war from the 1600s brought decline, and the kingdom was ultimately conquered by the Portuguese and absorbed by rival Shona states.

In 1480 the paramount chief, or kalonga, of the Phiri clan founded the Maravi Empire, which stretched from the Indian Ocean through modern Mozambique into Zambia and central Malawi. Its political organisation resembled that of the Luba, and its main exports were ivory and manufactured iron traded through Swahili brokers. The Maravi also carried the traditions that became the Nyau secret society into the region.

When the Portuguese attempted in the 1590s to monopolise Maravi export trade, the Maravi of Lundu responded by deploying their WaZimba armed force. The WaZimba sacked the Portuguese trading towns of Tete and Sena among others, checking early European commercial penetration of the Zambezi interior.

According to Lunda genesis myth, the Luba hunter Chibinda Ilunga married the Lunda princess Lueji around 1600 and was granted control of her kingdom, transplanting the Luba model of governance. The Lunda kings remained separate from the Luba empire and expanded their political and economic dominance, trading with both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts. Their eventual collapse dispersed peoples into much of present-day Zambia.

At the end of the eighteenth century some of the Mbunda migrated into Barotseland and the Mongu area, among them the followers of the Ciyengele. Their arrival added to the ethnic composition of western Zambia, alongside the Luyana who had established the Barotse Kingdom on the Zambezi floodplains.

The Portuguese explorer Francisco de Lacerda led an expedition from Mozambique to the Kazembe region, aiming to cross Southern Africa from coast to coast for the first time, and died in 1798; his friend Francisco Pinto continued the journey. The venture underpinned Portugal's claim to and exploration of the territory lying between Portuguese Mozambique and Portuguese Angola.

Livingstone, who preached the ending of the slave trade through Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation, reached the Zambezi waterfalls in 1855 and named them after Queen Victoria; locally they are Mosi-o-Tunya. The falls and the nearby town named after him became enduring national landmarks and the core of Zambian tourism.

Highly publicised accounts of Livingstone's journeys, and his death in 1873, motivated a wave of European visitors, missionaries and traders into the territory. This influx prepared the ground for commercial concession-hunting and eventual British control.

In 1885 Portugal published the Pink Map claiming the territory between Angola and Mozambique, including the area of present-day Zambia. The claim set Lisbon on a collision course with British ambitions in south-central Africa.

In 1888 the BSA Company secured mineral rights from the Litunga, paramount chief of the Lozi, over the area that became Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia. The concession gave a chartered company command of the territory's mineral wealth and became the legal basis of colonial administration.

Following the Portuguese Pink Map claim, Britain issued its 1890 ultimatum and began consolidating control over the area between Angola and Mozambique. The ultimatum settled which imperial power would govern the lands that became Zambia.

Cecil Rhodes's chartered British South Africa Company administered Northern Rhodesia from 1891 until the UK takeover in 1923.

Asked by Cecil Rhodes in 1895 to prospect for minerals and improve river navigation, the American scout Burnham identified major copper deposits along the Kafue River. The find pointed to the resource base that would make copper the country's defining export.

In December 1897 a group of Angoni or Ngoni in the east rebelled under Tsinco, son of King Mpezeni, but the rising was put down and Mpezeni accepted the Pax Britannica. The area was thereafter administered as North-Eastern Rhodesia.

In 1911 Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia and North-Eastern Rhodesia were merged to form Northern Rhodesia. The territory bore that name until 1964, giving the future Zambia its single administrative frame.

The onset of industrial copper mining on the Copperbelt in the late 1920s triggered rapid urbanisation, and through the 1920s and 1930s the growth of mining drove economic development and drew immigrants to the territory. Population settled along the railway and roads running south from the Copperbelt through Kapiri Mposhi, Lusaka, Choma and Livingstone, a pattern that still shapes the country's geography.

In 1923 the British government assumed direct control of the territory from the British South Africa Company, making it a protectorate.

In 1953 Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland were grouped into a single semi-autonomous federation, despite opposition from a sizeable minority of the population who demonstrated against it in 1960–61. The federation dominated the territory's politics until its dissolution and galvanised African nationalist organisation.

The federation was dissolved on 31 December 1963. Its collapse opened the way for Northern Rhodesia's own elections and for full independence within a year.

Shortly after Kaunda took office an uprising broke out in the north of the country led by Alice Lenshina. The Lumpa Uprising was Kaunda's first internal conflict as national leader and an early test of the new state's coercive capacity.

Zambia declared its independence on the day of the closing ceremony of the 1964 Summer Olympics, becoming the first country to enter an Olympic Games under one name and leave it under another. It was also the country's first participation in global sport.

In January 1964 Kaunda won the sole election ever held for Prime Minister of Northern Rhodesia, encouraged to stand by the Colonial Governor Sir Evelyn Hone. The victory positioned him as the leader who would take the country to independence.

On 24 October 1964 Northern Rhodesia became independent of the United Kingdom as the Republic of Zambia within the Commonwealth, ending British colonial rule and installing Kenneth Kaunda as inaugural president. Despite considerable mineral wealth, the new state had few trained Zambians able to run government and depended heavily on foreign expertise, with over 70,000 resident Europeans of disproportionate economic weight. Kaunda led the country for the next 27 years, until his defeat in the 1991 multi-party election.

The 1969 reforms gave the state a majority stake in the mining companies that dominated Zambia's economy. Copper remained the country's dominant export for decades, leaving it exposed to swings in world commodity prices.

The September 1970 summit brought together leaders of newly independent and developing nations seeking to avoid alignment with either side of the Cold War. It reflected Zambia's role as a prominent Front-Line State supporting liberation movements in southern Africa.

In the mid-1970s the price of copper, Zambia's principal export, fell sharply worldwide, while the cost of transporting it over great distances added further strain. Zambia turned to foreign and international lenders, but as prices stayed depressed debt service became increasingly difficult and the country fell into poverty; by the mid-1990s its per capita foreign debt was among the world's highest.

Civil strife in newly independent Angola and Mozambique and the Namibian War of Independence brought refugees and severe transport disruption, and by the late 1970s the Benguela railway running west through Angola was essentially closed to Zambian freight. Landlocked Zambia lost another export corridor for its copper.

The change, formalised in a new constitution in 1972, banned opposition parties and concentrated power in UNIP. One-party rule lasted until multi-party elections were restored in 1991.

Kaunda's endorsement of Patriotic Front guerrillas raiding into Southern Rhodesia produced political tension and militarisation of the frontier, culminating in the border's closure in 1973. Cutting the main supply route and rail line to the sea imposed heavy costs on the Zambian economy, though the Kariba hydroelectric station still met domestic electricity needs.

Mining and quarrying were nationalised in 1973. Under state control production declined substantially, weakening the sector that supplied the bulk of national export earnings.

The line, built with Chinese financing and engineers between 1970 and 1975, gave landlocked Zambia a route for copper exports that bypassed white-ruled Rhodesia and South Africa. It remains one of the largest infrastructure projects China has built in Africa.

On 3 September 1978 the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army shot down a civilian airliner near Kariba, and most of the 18 survivors were killed by ZAPU militants led by Joshua Nkomo. Rhodesia retaliated with Operation Gatling, striking Nkomo's guerrilla headquarters outside Lusaka in the Green Leader Raid and attacking two further bases with paratroops and helicopter-borne troops. The episode exposed Zambia's vulnerability as a frontline host of liberation movements.

Rhodesia's predominantly white government, which had issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, accepted majority rule in 1979 under the Lancaster House Agreement. The settlement ended the conflict on Zambia's southern border that had cost it trade routes and invited cross-border raids.

In the 1980s and 1990s falling copper prices, economic mismanagement and a prolonged drought damaged the economy.

The cross-border strike in May 1986 was one of several raids South Africa's apartheid government carried out against ANC exiles based in neighbouring Front-Line States. Zambia had hosted the ANC's exiled leadership, including Oliver Tambo, since the 1960s.

The vote, scheduled for 13 August 2026 by the Electoral Commission of Zambia, follows a December 2025 constitutional amendment that expanded parliament from 167 to 280 seats. Hichilema won the presidency in 2021 after five previous unsuccessful attempts.

The two governments signed the reciprocal travel agreement on 4 February 2026, part of a wider African push toward visa-free travel between African Union member states.

The court ruled on 10 February 2026 that former president Edgar Lungu's son had failed to adequately explain how he had acquired 79 vehicles, a petrol station and several flats. The order formed part of a wider inquiry into unexplained wealth linked to the late president's family.

The ban, imposed on 16 February 2026, responded to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in South Africa. Zambia has periodically restricted regional livestock trade to guard against the disease.

Zimba, of the National Democratic Congress, was detained on 24 February 2026 in connection with a doctored picture of the president circulated online. Opposition parties said the arrest formed part of a wider pattern of pressure on government critics ahead of the general election.

The rollout, which started on 1 December 2025, made Zambia one of the first African countries to offer the twice-yearly injectable more widely as part of efforts to curb new HIV infections.

President Trump's proclamation of 16 December 2025 added Zambia to a list of 39 countries facing new or tightened US travel restrictions, citing concerns over visa overstays and document security.

The changes, signed into law on 18 December 2025, came less than a year before the general election and drew criticism from opposition parties over their timing and cost. The government said the expansion would improve representation.

The men, including a Mozambican national, were sentenced on 15 September 2025 to two years' imprisonment. Prosecutors said they had attempted to use ritual means to harm the president, an offence under Zambian law.

The lawsuit, filed on 16 September 2025, sought compensation for agricultural damage from a February 2025 dam collapse at a Chinese-operated copper mine that sent acidic waste into a tributary of the Kafue River, earlier forcing a shutdown of water supplies in Kitwe.

The 2022 Zambian census put the population at 19,610,769, with Bemba, Nyanja, Tonga, North-Western peoples, Lozi, Mambwe and Tumbuka the largest groups. Fertility remained high at 6.2 as of 2007, sustaining rapid growth.

In the August 2021 general elections, on a 70 per cent turnout, Hakainde Hichilema took 59 per cent of the vote against 39 per cent for incumbent Edgar Lungu, and was sworn in on 24 August 2021. The victory came on his sixth attempt, after five previous unsuccessful runs during which he was repeatedly arrested on charges critics called politically motivated; Lungu, of the governing Patriotic Front, conceded defeat days after the vote, in a second peaceful electoral removal of a sitting Zambian president.

In December 2019 the government unanimously decided to legalise cannabis for medicinal and export purposes only. The measure was intended to open a new export earner alongside copper.

In September 2019 AGR said it would invest $150 million in a 50 megawatt solar farm together with an irrigation dam and an 80,000-tonne expansion of existing grain silo capacity. The project addressed both the electricity deficit and agricultural storage.

Zambia signed the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2019. The step aligned the country with the disarmament bloc in multilateral forums.

In July 2018 Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and President Edgar Lungu signed twelve agreements in Lusaka covering trade, investment, tourism and diplomacy. The package broadened Zambia's external partnerships beyond traditional donors.

Eleven candidates contested the presidential election of 22 January 2015, and on 24 January Lungu was declared the winner. He was re-elected in the first round of the August 2016 general election.

In early 2015 a poor 2014/2015 rainy season left water levels low at the Kariba dam and other major dams, producing a serious electricity shortage. The crisis exposed the vulnerability of a power system heavily dependent on hydroelectricity.

Michael Sata, president since 2011, died in office on 28 October 2014, bringing his vice-president Guy Scott to office as Africa's first white head of state since the end of apartheid. Scott served only as caretaker, as the constitution barred him from contesting the resulting early presidential election, held on 22 January 2015.

Adult HIV prevalence among those aged 15 to 49 fell to 13 per cent in 2013/14 from about 16 per cent a decade earlier, and maternal mortality dropped to 135 per 100,000 live births in 2020 from 296 in 2007. Under-five mortality fell to 59.3 per 1,000 live births by 2020, and life expectancy at birth recovered to around 62 years by 2023 from about 40.9 years in 2007.

Sata of the Patriotic Front won the September 2011 presidential election, defeating incumbent Rupiah Banda.

The Education Act of 2011 regulates equal and quality education in Zambia. English-language literacy stood at 86.7 per cent in 2018, while education spending was 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2020.

Upon President Mwanawasa's abrupt death in August 2008, Vice President Banda succeeded him and then won the by-election held that October.

From May 2008 the number of Zimbabweans in Zambia rose significantly, largely people who had been living in South Africa and were fleeing xenophobic violence there. Zambia already hosted some 88,900 refugees and asylum seekers, mainly from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Zimbabwe and Rwanda.

By 2007 Zambia had achieved nine straight years of economic growth, with inflation at 8.9 per cent against 30 per cent in 2000, alongside falling interest rates and rising trade. Growth rested largely on foreign investment in mining and high world copper prices, and brought a surge of donor and investor confidence.

Mwanawasa's 2006 re-election was judged free and fair, in contrast to earlier contests.

The milestone, reached in April 2005, cancelled most of Zambia's external debt after years of economic reform. It followed decades of debt accumulated under state-led development policies and the copper price collapses of the 1970s and 1980s.

To reach HIPC completion in 2004 the government drafted an austerity budget freezing civil service salaries and adding taxes. The measures sparked a nationwide strike in February 2004, illustrating the domestic political cost of debt-relief conditionality.

In 2004 Zambia recorded a maize surplus for the first time in 26 years. White Zimbabwean farmers expelled by Robert Mugabe, numbering roughly 150 to 300 people by 2004, were welcomed and farmed tobacco, wheat and chili on some 150 farms.

In January 2003 Lusaka told the IMF and World Bank it wished to revisit performance criteria requiring privatisation of the Zambia National Commercial Bank and the national telephone and electricity utilities. Agreements were reached, but overspending on civil service wages pushed final debt forgiveness back from late 2003 to early 2005 at the earliest.

Three parties filed a legal petition challenging the election of ruling-party candidate Levy Mwanawasa.

With total foreign debt exceeding $6 billion, Zambia qualified in 2000 for relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative, conditional on meeting performance criteria. The country hoped to reach the completion point and substantial debt forgiveness by late 2003.

Between 1996 and 2000 the mining industry nationalised in 1973 was privatised. Investment, production and employment in copper subsequently increased, and by 2019 copper made up about 69 per cent of the value of all Zambian goods exported.

Under the 1996 constitution Zambia is officially a Christian nation, while recognising and protecting freedom of religion. By 2022 the Zambia Statistics Agency estimated 98 per cent of Zambians were Christian.

On 28 April 1993 the national football squad, widely regarded as the strongest Zambia ever assembled, perished in a plane crash at Libreville, Gabon. Despite the loss, Zambia was ranked 15th in the FIFA rankings in 1996, the highest by any southern African team, and won the African Cup of Nations in 2012.

In 1991 Kaunda and the UNIP government agreed to reinstate multiparty democracy, and in the ensuing general election in October Frederick Chiluba's Movement for Multi-Party Democracy defeated Kaunda's United National Independence Party, ending his 27 years in office. It was one of the first peaceful transfers of power from a long-ruling African liberation-era leader to an opposition party, establishing competitive elections as the route to the presidency and opening a period of limited economic reform.

Riots against Kaunda accelerated in June 1990 and many protesters were killed by the regime, and later that year he survived an attempted coup. The unrest forced the question of political pluralism onto the agenda.

Established in 1986, the Lechwe Trust has supported visual arts in Zambia through grants, scholarships, exhibitions and the collecting of contemporary work. In 2019 it staged Art Lives On – ii, a retrospective of sculpture, painting and prints by Chandia and Mwamba.