Critical Transformations: Rethinking Zambian Development (original) (raw)

The Changing Paradigms of Zambia’s National Development Planning: An Enigma or A Necessity?

World Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2023

Development planning has been observed to be a critical element in the process of development attainment. The support for development planning at national and sub-national levels has gained momentum over the years and is considered essential to both developed and developing countries alike. Zambia has in like manner adopted national development planning as a tool to foster national development attainment. It is within the Zambian context that this study sought to exploit the gap in literature and scholarly discourse in relation to reviewing the progression of national development planning in Zambia. Through archival, secondary and informant interview data analysis and synthesis, this study highlights the significant changes to the development planning institutions and processes in Zambia’s post-independence era from 1964 to date. It can be observed that significant institutional, policy, process and legislation changes have occurred over the years, and these have been accompanied by peculiar development planning challenges. From these observations, the study highlights policy lessons that inter alia include the need for commitment and adaptability; clarity on political roles and technocrats responsibilities; the need to devise models that synchronize economic stabilization goals and development planning goals; ensuring that financing instruments are programme/project specific and not conceived in generalities; and the need for the planning institutions to have goodwill from peer/sector institutions as much as from the politicians. Essentially, it is observed that development planning institutional changes are justified as long as they are aimed at continuous internal improvements and are responsive to emerging inclusive development dynamics.

Prospects for the Formation of Developmental States in Africa: The Case of Zambia

2016

It is acknowledged that a developmental state, more than any non-developmental state has more prospects of bringing about rapid growth and development. And yet, the number of developmental states in the developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa can be counted on one's finger tips. This is because a developmental state is premised on a number of prerequisite criteria that most developing countries fail to meet. In recent years, the Economic Commission for Africa and some African leaders have been strongly advocating for the transformation of African countries into democratic developmental states. This paper discusses the case of Zambia. It explains the concept of a developmental state, why Zambia is not a developmental state, what it has to do in order to transform itself into a developmental state and what lessons it can learn from states that have become developmental in order to achieve this transformation.

Zambia: Back to the Future?

Since the mid-1980s, Zambia has been identified as an emblematic case of a country dominated by its donors. Massive debt and aid dependency have weakened the government’s ability to negotiate with external actors, to set its own policies and to act on the wishes of its citizens. Abrahamsen (2000) described a ‘disciplined democracy’, in which conditionality had been used by the Bretton Woods Institutions to enforce their prescriptions, with the result that no matter who was elected economic liberalization would follow. Yet, in the past two years, the possibility has been mooted that Zambia is reclaiming the initiative in its aid relationships. This paper argues that the opportunity to go ‘back to the future’ may arise if the country is able to take advantage of economic conditions somewhat reminiscent of the first two decades of independence from 1964 to 1984. However, the chapter concludes that the country is still being effectively disciplined, albeit through means more subtle than just conditionality. In order to achieve donor acceptance of this kind of Zambian leadership, the government would need to secure the high moral and political ground by presenting itself as the legitimate representative of a popular sentiment in favour of an ideologically-coherent national strategy. However, with legitimacy and ideological coherence in very short supply it is unsurprising that the aid strategy is predicated on dependence as a fact of life and that the Fifth National Development Plan is little more than a shopping list. The Zambian case suggests that, although ownership now forms a key element of donor rhetoric, both the ideological coherence and the political equality between donor and recipient that would be needed to breathe life into the principle of ownership have been eroded over the past twenty years.

CONTEMPORARY CONCERNS IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES: PERSPECTIVES FROM TANZANIA AND ZAMBIA

As part of the institutionalization of "development" after the Second World War, academia has witnessed emergence of the discipline of development studies. The five decades of the discipline have testified a number of theoretical shifts in considering how to conceptualize the very notion of development, and how to make sense out of the global processes and inequalities. Additionally, the place of development studies within the disciplinary landscape of academia has been continuously debated. Moreover, as a discipline, development studies have had more or less close connections with development policy and practice. Many strands of development studies have contributed to defining the pertinent development problems, and generating suggestions on the ways in which to address these problems.

Local government reforms and the challenge of local development in Zambia

2016

6.1 Abstract At independence in 1964, Zambia inherited a governmental system whose structure existed mainly for the purposes of serving the political, social and economic interests of the minority colonial rulers and other white settlers. This is notwithstanding the rhetoric of “indirect rule” through which the colonialists outwitted the African traditional leadership with the fake promise of increased African participation in governance and development matters over their territories. Instead, what Africans got was increased presence of colonial administrative officials in rural areas, and increased colonial control of African chiefs and headmen. At that time, as was the case with many other new countries, one of Zambia’s daunting tasks was that of nation-building through accelerated national development. This could not be achieved in the void of clear political, social and economic policies and laws. Consequently, national development was to be pursued through various structural re...