Zambia's economic travails

Voters face a change as two-term President Chiluba has to step down

Zambia's economy has had a rocky road since independence in 1964.

At the time, the country was one of Africa's richest, with deep copper deposits and a healthy agricultural sector.

But mismanagement and corruption over the three and a half decades since have wrought their damage.

And, as the 10-year rule of President Frederick Chiluba comes to an end, Zambians will ask themselves who will put them back on the road to prosperity.

The problem for Zambians is that both the old nostrum - nationalisation, state socialism and a strong leader - and a later agenda of privatisation and liberalisation appear to have failed.

Bear left

From the 1960s right through to the early 1990s, under President Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia veered to the left.

The country's huge copper mines became public property, as did its farms, in an attempt to solve issues of ownership once and for all.

The result was underperformance - exacerbated by corruption at the top as Kaunda's United National Independence Party made Zambia's de facto one-party state into the law of the land.

The debts built up as the country got poorer.

Party time

By 1990, amid food riots across the country, it was time for a change.

In 1991, elections under a new constitution saw Mr Chiluba's Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) take power.

The result was the most sweeping economic liberalisation programme in Southern Africa, raising hopes that foreign investment would begin to flow back, and a stranded economy be reinvigorated.

The government agreed to a reform wish list drawn up by the International Monetary Fund with a view to getting speedy debt relief.

Copper and agriculture held the promise of a return to economic health.

Open doors

Certainly, the gates have opened to imports, with South African goods leading the pack.

But, with the currency meltdown in neighbouring Zimbabwe, Zambian traders have seen import prices collapse, driving indigenous goods off the market.

Debt relief finally arrived last year, and $3.6bn of the total $6.5bn debt is to be forgiven as long as the savings go on anti-poverty programmes.

In any case, it will take some time to make any impact on levels of social, health and education spending which leave the three quarters of Zambians living on less than $1 a day completely on their own.

Graft goes on

And again, incompetence and corruption have left their mark.

Within two years of taking office Mr Chiluba was criticised for surrounding himself with "yes-men", with too little attention paid to opposition concerns.

The privatisation of the state copper mines, which were losing $2m a day, saw assets simply evaporate as many were sold in 1999 for little to insiders.

Even where money did come in from the sell-offs, much of it disappeared.

And mass lay-offs then meant that ex-mineworkers were left facing a jobless future.

Zambia's problems have been compounded by floods which have wiped out a large proportion of this year's crop, coinciding with a shortfall of grain - particularly the country's main staple, maize - across Southern Africa.

And few believe that the 5% growth Zambia is currently managing will prove sufficient to pull the country out of poverty.

Zambians are faced with a choice of 11 presidential candidates.

But numbed by the long years of misrule and poverty, it remains an open question how many of the country's 3m electors will even bother to vote.