Zambia's influential former Finance Minister, Ronald Penza, has been shot dead at his home.

Zambian Radio said that Mr Penza had been killed by armed men who broke into his house in a suburb of Lusaka.

A family spokesman described the killing as an assassination -- he said nothing was stolen.

Mr Penza was finance minister until March this year, when he was dismissed by President Chiluba over policy differences.

As minister, he spearheaded the dismantling of the command economy the government had inherited from the former president, Kenneth Kaunda, and supervised a privatisation programme.

Correspondents say he was widely believed to have political ambitions and was thought to be planning to run for the presidency in elections scheduled for two-thousand and one.