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VEDANTA TAKES OVER KONKOLA COPPER MINES: Vedanta Resources, India’s largest refiner of copper, is to pay $48.2 million for a 51% stake in KCM, with a funding guarantee of $220 million over the next nine years, said Finance Minister Ngandu Magande at a signing ceremony in Lusaka on 19 August. Anglo American, the world’s second-largest mining company, abandoned Konkola in January 2002, saying that prices were too low to justify expenditure beyond the $384 million it had already spent; since when prices have soared by about 80% making Konkola’s operations profitable. London-based Vedanta, which is an arm of Sterlite Industries, plans to cut costs and boost output. Its shares on the London Stock Exchange have risen sharply. “Vedanta will help revive the Copperbelt and the entire Zambian economy,” said President Levy Mwanawasa. Most of Zambia’s nine million people lived on less than a dollar a day, he added. (Mail, 23 Aug; other sources) ZAMBIA TOURISM ON A ROLL: Zambia has been ranked among the top 10 tourist destinations in the United Kingdom’s Trends and Spends travel survey. That makes Zambian tourism’s third award this year, following its scoop of the Best Overall Stand at the Gateway Show in Cape Town in March and the Best Southern African Stand at the Indaba, a travel spectacular held in Johannesburg in May. Meanwhile the response to the Zambia National Tourist Board’s Visit Zambia in 2005 campaign has included the French Embassy’s appointment to the ZNTB of a translator to work on brochures and the website content. A ZNTB television and radio news flash reported that a group of 94 American doctors travelling with Pollina Tours of New York were due in Livingstone shortly. (Times, 27 July) DR. LIVINGSTONE IS OURS, WE PRESUME: Zambia is calling for Zimbabwe to hand over the life-size statue of Victorian explorer David Livingstone, which has stood since the 1930s on the Zimbabwe side of one of the seven wonders of the natural world. As tourists have flocked in increasing numbers to Zambia, instead of to strife-torn Zimbabwe, the town of Livingstone has boomed and locals now want to embellish it with the bronze of the great explorer whose heart is buried under an mpundu tree in Zambia. Two years ago the statue was vandalised by thugs from the Mugabe regime who saw it as a sign of colonialism. “We Zambians have great affection for his memory and though we changed many colonial names we kept the name of Livingstone, out of deep respect, “said Siloka Mukuni, local chief of the Leya people. One theory is that the bronze, sculpted in the 1930s by William Reid Dick, was originally on Zambia’s side, but Zimbabweans deny this. Meanwhile Zambia needs to get its hands on the statue before next year’s 100th anniversary of the founding of the tourist town, and the 150th anniversary of Livingstone’s first sighting of the mighty Victoria Falls. (Daily Telegraph, 1 Aug) NEW WILDLIFE SANCTUARY FOR LUSAKA: The Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) and the Forestry Department plan to turn two forest reserves into a wildlife sanctuary and recreational park covering 17, 000 acres of the Miombo woodlands at Shantumbu, 15 kilometres south of Lusaka. This would prevent the encroachment of agriculture, settlements, charcoal burning and mining – all inimical to the sustainability of forests - and would “contribute to economic development through tourism,” said Kennedy Kambeu, principal forest officer for Lusaka Province. (Mail, 16 Aug) COUP CAPTAIN DIES: Coup co-mastermind Captain Jack Chiti, 50, died on 18 August from cancer. President Mwanawasa had commuted his death sentence to imprisonment, suspended for two years, and freed him on 27 June. Captain Chiti, originally a schoolmaster, joined the army in 1982 and worked as an education officer until the failed coup of 28 October 1997, when co-conspirator Stephen Lungu, alias ‘Captain Solo’, broadcast from a Lusaka radio station the intention to oust President Chiluba. The 47 Zambia army rebels involved were captured later that day. (Post, 19, 21 Aug) COFFEE ON THE BOIL: The Coffee Board of Zambia expects to generate about $10. 2 million from a projected yield of 6, 800 tonnes of coffee this year, said CBZ inspector Sunday Silongwe in an interview at the 78th Agricultural and Commercial Show in Lusaka. There were currently 70 large-scale coffee growers and 500 small-scale producers in Zambia, mainly in Luapula and Northern provinces, he told reporters. (Mail, 2 Aug) SUGAR EXPORTS RISE: Zambia Sugar plc expects
to earn $40 million from exports this year, thanks to a targeted
increase in production and an aggressive approach to regional
marketing, said head of corporate affairs Lovemore Sievu. “Had
it not been for restrictions in the international sugar trade,
especially with the EU, we could have earned over $100 million,”
he added. The EU is reorganising its policies on sugar imports,
and Mr. Sievu said he hoped the changes would not be deleterious
to Zambia’s struggling sugar industry. (Post, 27 July) COPPER PRICE SURGES: On 15 August the price of copper rose to its highest level since last April, closing at $1.33 a pound, up 55 cents on the day, as the effect of a weak US dollar flowed through into commodities other than gold. Renewed interest in copper by investment funds is seen as the start of a significant bull run in the price of the metal, as demand picks up after the traditional August slowdown. (Miningnews.net, 16 Aug) ZAMBEEF STEPS OUT: Zambeef products, the major producer of beef, chicken, eggs and dairy products in Zambia has just clinched a deal worth $55, 000 to export processed leather to Tanzania via its subsidiary company, Zamshoe, and security footwear to Malawi, the company’s PR manager Justo Kopulande said at the 78th Agricultural and Commercial Show in Lusaka. ZP had a standing target of 70, 000 hides a month, he told reporters. (Mail, 3 Aug) TOO POOR FOR DEMOCRACY, SAYS MINISTER: Local government minister Sylvia Masebo told Parliament that local elections would be postponed until 2006 to coincide with national and presidential elections, because setting up polling stations and apparatus in remote rural areas for local elections would cost about £45 million. “We cannot afford that luxury. The money would be far better spent on roads and hospitals,” she said. (Zambian press, The Daily Telegraph, 10 Aug) UNZA LECTURERS STRIKE TO REMOVE VICE-CHANCELLOR: Zambia’s lofty world of academia, otherwise known as the University of Zambia Lecturers and Researchers Union ((UNZALU), has gone on strike until the Vice-Chancellor Professor Robert Serpell and his deputy Prof. Geoffrey Lungwangwa are removed from office. Unzalu president Thomas Mabwe said the strike had been precipitated by “a management style based on manipulative behaviour, vindictiveness and dictatorial tendencies.” Matters involved in the dispute included the reintroduction of professorial allowances previously withdrawn, and two $5, 800 Toyota cars bought for management. (Post, 19 Aug) GOVERNMENT PRAISES LIONS CLUB: Lions International Foundation is to build a $284, 000, 40-bed eye clinic in Kitwe, while Kitwe Lions are funding eye projects at St. Francis Hospital, Katete, youth minister George Chulamanda told a Lions’ dinner at the Hotel Edinburgh. Celebrating district governor Muti Beyani’s installation, he urged Zambians to join the Lions. Retiring governor Maureen Hight said Zambia’s national membership had risen to 1, 939. (Times, 27 July) WEDDING CHICKEN SCANDAL: Kitwe deputy mayor Tom Lungu has been indefinitely suspended by the MMD for diverting to his own wedding feast 500 chickens worth K9 million that had been given to MMD district offices by First Lady Maureen Mwanawasa, to kick-start a fund-raising business venture. Mrs. Mwanawasa attended the wedding feast. It also appears that Lungu failed to pay his K1.6 million honeymoon bill at Kumasamba Lodge, and owed K800, 000 to Jubilee Lodge in Kitwe for his wife’s kitchen party, at which diverted chickens also featured. (Post, 9 Aug) EXCHANGE RATE, 23 August 2004: £1 = ZMK 8,464.60 Zambia High Commissioner Anderson Chibwa and around 50 Zambia Society Trust members and friends attended a lunch party given at the High Commission in London by Trust president Vic Godfrey, to celebrate 50 years since he began his service to Zambia, in Lusaka on 29 July 1954. The High Commissioner and Trust vice-president Geoffrey de Mornay Davies paid tribute to Mr. Godfrey, 87, who established the Zambia National Provident Fund and whom President Kaunda made a grand officer of the Order of Distinguished Service. In 1996, the new ZNPF office complex in Lusaka was named Godfrey House. Apart from his work in the realms of social welfare and urban outreach, Vic gave much time to the scouting movement. From 1975, in London, he helped set up Zimco House and establish ZAL Holdings. He is a founder member of the Trust. Zambia Society Trust member Ann Leslie, who is training like
mad for the Flora Lite Challenge in Hyde Park on Sunday 5 September
and so far has raised more than £430 for our orphans, has
urged members to join her family and friends in the park at about
11.15 a.m. that day, to watch the finish and join in the fun.
“Meet us in zone Z, which will be clearly marked and is
near the Hyde Park Tube Station side of the park,” she says.
Ann, 50, is the daughter of the late Drs. Richard and Kay Carruthers
and grew up in Lusaka. Send last-minute sponsorship cheques made
out to the Zambia Society Trust, to Mrs. Ann Leslie, 7, Holmes
Road, Earley, Reading, Berks, RG6 7BH; telephone 01189261788;
email: ann.leslie1@btopenworld.com
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