Zambia's population is highly urbanized, and large parts of the country are thinly populated. Population is concentrated in the “Line of Rail,” the area served by the railway linking the Copperbelt with Lusaka, the capital, and with the border town of Livingstone.

Most of Zambia forms part of the high plateau of this part of Africa (3,000 to 5,000 feet 【900 to 1,500 metres】 above sea level); major relief features occur where river valleys and rifted troughs, some lake-filled, dissect its surface. Lake Tanganyika (Tanganyika, Lake) lies some 2,000 feet below the plateau, and the largest rift, that containing the Luangwa River, is a serious barrier to communications. The highest elevations occur in the east, where the Nyika Plateau on the Malaŵian border is generally over 6,000 feet, rising to more than 7,000 feet in the Mafinga Hills. The general slope of the plateau is toward the southwest, although the drainage of the Zambezi turns eastward to the Indian Ocean. Over most of the country, ancient crystalline rocks are exposed, the product of prolonged erosion processes. In western Zambia they are overlain by younger sandy deposits, relict of a once more extensive Kalahari desert. In central and eastern parts of the country, downwarping of the plateau surface forms swamp- or lake-filled depressions (e.g., Lake Bangweulu, the Lukanga Swamp); in more elevated regions, ridges and isolated hills made up of more resistant rocks punctuate otherwise smooth skylines.

The continental divide—between the Congo River drainage, which flows to the Atlantic, and that of the Zambezi, which drains into the Indian Ocean—runs along the Zambia-Congo (Kinshasa) border west of the Pedicle and then northeastward to the border with Tanzania. Both the Luapula (Luapula River) (which drains the Bangweulu basin into Lake Mweru) and Lake Tanganyika are tributary to the Congo. The rest of the country lies within the Zambezi (Zambezi River) basin, the river itself rising in northwestern Zambia and circling through Angola before traversing the sandy plains of western Zambia. At the Victoria Falls it drops 300 feet into a milewide chasm at the head of the gorge leading down to Lake Kariba and the troughlike middle part of its valley. It has two main tributaries in Zambia. Rising on the Copperbelt, the Kafue River drains the Lukanga Swamp and Kafue Flats before an abrupt descent to the Zambezi. The Luangwa River, mostly confined within its rift trough, is quite different. The Bangweulu Swamps and the Kafue Flats are wetlands of international importance.

The oldest rocks of the country are volcanics and granites of the Bangweulu block in the northeast. These are 2.5 billion years and older and have been unaffected by orogenic processes since Precambrian times. This old structure is partly covered by ancient sedimentary rocks, and together they constitute the basement complex. Sedimentaries of the Katangan (Katangan Complex) System (550 to 620 million years old) are extensive in the central areas, and mineralization of these rocks is the basis of Zambia's mining industry. Later sedimentary rocks of the Karoo (Karroo (Karoo System)) System filled rifted troughs in the plateau surface, some of which, as in the Luangwa and middle Zambezi valleys, have been partially re-excavated. Coal seams occur in Karoo rocks to the north of Lake Kariba. These structural troughs are ancient features. Younger rifts in the north, part of the East African Rift System, are occupied by Lakes Mweru and Tanganyika. Karoo and older sedimentaries are also found in the west, buried under the predominantly sandy deposits of the Kalahari System.

The soils of the plateau are generally of poor quality, long-continued weathering and erosion having leached many of their nutrients. Much of the plateau is covered by the so-called Sandveld soils, which have a sandy surface layer overlying a clayey subsoil, often with laterite (an iron-rich horizon). Shifting cultivation is widespread, and for more permanent cultivation soils need to be carefully managed. More fertile red clay soils occur over limestone and basic rocks and have attracted commercial farming. Soils of the Kalahari Sands have little agricultural potential and are mainly under woodland. The black clay soils of some floodplains and swamp areas are highly fertile but difficult to cultivate, being waterlogged in the rainy season and rock-hard when dry.

Although Zambia lies within the tropics, its climate is modified by the altitude of the country and is generally favourable to human settlement and comfort. The marked seasonal pattern of rainfall is caused by the north and south movement of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), following the apparent movement of the Sun. In January the ITCZ is in its southernmost position, and the rainy season is at its peak; by June it has moved north, and the weather is dry. Summer rains reduce the high temperatures that might be expected at this time.

Rainfall (concentrated in just five months) is highest over the Bangweulu basin (more than 60 inches 【1,500 millimetres】 per annum) and along the Congo-Zambezi watershed, declining southward to the middle Zambezi valley, which averages less than 28 inches. The Luangwa valley is also drier than the surrounding plateau. Rainfall is less reliable in the drier regions, and failure of the rains in the south and southwest periodically brings famine to these areas.

Temperature is modified by altitude, mean daily maximum temperatures higher than 100° F (38° C) occurring only in the Luangwa valley and the southwest. The coolest area is the high Nyika plateau on the border with Malaŵi. During the cold months (June and July), the area west of the Line of Rail is coolest, with mean minimum temperatures mostly under 45° F (7° C). Sesheke, in the southwest, has frost on an average of 10 days per year.

Average annual hours of sunshine range from more than 3,000 in the southwest to less than 2,600 on the eastern border. Winds are predominantly easterly-southeasterly, although in the rainy season winds blow from the northwest and north. Wind speeds are rarely strong enough to cause damage.

Although the major contrast is between the rainy season and the drier months, three seasons may be identified.

The warm wet season lasts from November until April. The movement into Zambia of the moist Congo air mass from the northwest heralds the start of the rains, in the north usually in early November and toward the end of the month around Lusaka. The change from dry to wet conditions is transitional rather than abrupt. December and January are the wettest months. Cloud cover lowers maximum temperatures but also limits radiative heat loss at night, so that minimum temperatures are kept relatively high. Relative humidity values are high, typically 95 percent in early morning but declining to 60–70 percent by midafternoon. Sunshine is surprisingly frequent, Lusaka averaging six hours of sunshine per day in January. Rainfall declines rapidly in April with the northward movement of the ITCZ.

The cool dry season lasts from April until August. The sun is overhead in the Northern Hemisphere, so temperatures are low; July is usually the coldest month. Clear skies allow maximum radiation and result in especially low temperatures on calm nights, with occasional ground frost occurring in sheltered valleys.

The hot dry season lasts from August until November. This is a period of rapidly rising temperatures; just two months separate July, the coldest month, and October, usually the hottest (although if the rains are delayed November can be hotter). Usually by mid-October cooler oceanic air moves in, leading to increasing humidity and cloud formation. High temperatures and increasing humidity make this one of the least comfortable times of the year, although the first rains wash away dry-season dust.

On the plateau, miombo woodland is characteristic: a semicontinuous tree cover dominated by small leguminous trees of the Brachystegia and Julbernardia genera but with a significant grassy undergrowth. Burning of the grasses in the dry season causes the trees to develop a corky, fire-resistant bark. Mopane woodland, in which Colophospermum mopane dominates but in which the baobab is distinctive, occurs in the drier and hotter valleys of the Zambezi in the south and in the Luangwa valley. Zambezi teak (Baikiea plurijuga) occurs in the southern fringe of the area covered by the Kalahari Sands. Mukwa (Pterocarpus angolensis), a good furniture timber, is found in the Lake Bangweulu area. More than 8 percent of the country has been set aside as forest reserve or protected forest areas.

Where there is seasonal flooding—in swamps and on floodplains, notably in the Bangweulu and Lukanga regions, in the upper Zambezi, and on the Kafue Flats—open grasslands are characteristic. On the plateau the tree cover is broken by grass-covered dambos: shallow saucer-shaped valleys, often lacking a surface watercourse.

The variety of Zambia's mammals is notable, and there are large concentrations on the major floodplains, particularly in the national parks of the Luangwa and Kafue valleys. Depletion of wildlife has occurred because of the spread of human activities outside the parks, while poaching is a serious threat within. The illegal trade in rhino horn has been responsible for the virtual elimination of the rhinoceros from Zambia, and poaching of elephants for their tusks has greatly reduced their numbers, despite government measures against it. There are a large range of smaller mammals and varied and numerous birdlife. The fish eagle, Zambia's national emblem, is common on large stretches of open water.

Reptiles include crocodiles, tortoises, terrapins, a variety of lizards, and many poisonous and nonpoisonous snakes. Insects of most orders are prevalent. Termite mounds, often large and sometimes pinnacled, are a landscape feature of some areas and can hinder farming operations.

Wildlife is protected in 19 official national parks and 34 game-management areas, which together constitute more than one-third of the country. Eight national parks have tourist facilities: South and North Luangwa, Kafue (Kafue National Park), Lochinvar, Blue Lagoon, Sumbu, Nyika, and Mosi-oa-Tunya. Kafue, the oldest and largest of these parks (8,650 square miles), is on the plateau and has generally low game concentrations, although it is noted for the variety of species of antelope it hosts. Lake Itezhi-Tezhi, a reservoir behind a regulating dam on the Kafue, has flooded part of the park. South Luangwa (3,500 square miles) has one of Africa's largest (but declining) elephant concentrations. North Luangwa, a park only recently made accessible to tourists, offers true wilderness adventure: walking safaris. Thornicroft's giraffe is unique to the Luangwa valley. The other parks are much smaller. Lochinvar, on the Kafue Flats, is of particular interest to bird-watchers, with more than 400 species recorded. The Kafue lechwe, a type of aquatic antelope, is unique to the flats. The Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park protects the environs of the Victoria Falls. Nyika National Park was established to preserve remnant patches of montane forest. Sumbu, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, is renowned for easy sightings of the rare sitatunga.

Relative to the country's area, Zambia's (Zambia) population is small (although, with a growth rate of more than 3 percent per annum, increasing rapidly). It is highly urbanized, with well over half the population living in the four provinces along the Line of Rail. The movement of people from the rural areas into the towns was particularly marked after independence. Government efforts to reverse the flow have had only limited success.

Most Zambians speak Bantu languages and are descended from farming and metal-using peoples who settled in the region over the past 2,000 years. Cultural traditions in the northeast and northwest indicate influences and migrations from the upper Congo basin. There are also some descendants of hunters and gatherers who seem to have been pushed back into the Kalahari, the Bangweulu and Lukanga swamps, and the Kafue Flats. In the 19th century invaders arrived from the south: Ngoni settled in the east, while the Kololo briefly ruled the Lozi in the upper Zambezi valley. Europeans began to enter in significant numbers in the late 19th century.

Although most Zambians are of Bantu origin, the complex patterns of immigration have produced wide linguistic and cultural variety. Eighty different languages or dialects have been identified in Zambia; they can usefully be considered as comprising 14 groups, of which the Bemba group is the most widespread, accounting for more than one-third of the population. Second in importance is the Nyanja group (about 17 percent), while the Tonga group is about 15 percent.

The non-African population tends to be located in the towns, although the commercial farming community, found mainly in the central and southern regions, includes Europeans and whites from South Africa, some holding Zambian citizenship. Many Europeans left at independence, and their numbers have steadily declined, partly owing to regulations that restrict the employment and residence of nonnationals.

By contrast, the number of Asians has risen since independence. The majority are engaged in the retail trade, and they also are concentrated in the major towns, because in 1970 non-Zambians were prohibited from trading in rural areas. Most are Indians, mainly Gujarātī speakers from western India.

There is some relationship between the distribution of major tribal groups and the administrative division of the country into provinces. The Western (formerly Barotse) Province is dominated by the Lozi, who live on and about the floodplain of the upper Zambezi. Lozi society is markedly centralized under the leadership of a king, the litunga, and at one time nurtured separatist aspirations.

In the North-Western Province, adjoining the Angolan and Congolese borders, there is no single dominant group; the peoples here include the southern Lunda and the Luvale, Chokwe, Luchazi, Mbunda, Ndembu, and Kaonde.

The Southern Province contains the Ila-Tonga (Ila) peoples, of which 12 separate groups can be identified, speaking closely related dialects. Settlement is characterized by dispersed homesteads, and there are no chiefs. Traditionally cattle-owning, they occupy an area of above-average soil fertility through which the railway was built, encouraging early involvement in commercial agriculture. Migration to urban areas is of lesser importance there than elsewhere.

The Northern Province is dominated by the Bemba, who formed an extensive kingdom in the 19th century. The province was a major source of mine labour, and Bemba has become the lingua franca of the Copperbelt as well as the most widely spoken language in the country. Most languages in the northeast of the province are closely related to languages in Tanzania and Malaŵi.

Luapula Province extends along the river of that name from Lake Bangweulu to Lake Mweru and is inhabited by a number of Bemba-speaking but culturally distinct peoples (among them the Lunda, Kabende, Aushi, and Chishinga). Fishing is the major economic activity. In the 19th century the valley was dominated by the Lunda kingdom of Kazembe.

The Eastern Province is the home of the Nsenga, Chewa, Kunda, and Ngoni. The last invaded from the south during the 19th century but took the language of the peoples that they raided. The dominant language is Nyanja, which is also spoken in Malaŵi and is the lingua franca in Lusaka, to which many migrants from this area have moved.

The ethnic boundary between the Ila-Tonga and the Lala- (Lala) Lamba groups runs approximately through the Central Province, with the Lenje-Soli peoples occupying a buffer area between the two. The Lenje are related to the Ila-Tonga, and the Soli to the Lala-Lamba, who, in turn, are connected with the Kaonde of the North-Western Province.

The Copperbelt (formerly the Western) Province is the location of the mining industry. The population is composed of people from all parts of Zambia, as well as some from neighbouring countries. This is true also of Lusaka Province, a small province created around the capital from the southern part of Central Province in 1976.

There are seven official vernacular languages: Bemba, Nyanja, Lozi, Tonga, Luvale, Lunda, and Kaonde, the latter three being languages of the North-Western Province. English is the official language of government.

Zambia is predominantly a Christian country, although few have totally abandoned all aspects of traditional belief systems. The first Christian missions arrived before colonial rule, and the growth of adherents was greatly assisted by the schools that they established. The Roman Catholic church is today the largest single denomination, but Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, and others are well established. The growth of fundamentalist churches has been particularly noticeable since independence, and the government of the newly independent country soon ran into conflict with two of these, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Lumpa church. The Asian community is predominantly Hindu, the rest mainly Muslim. There are relatively few Muslims in the African population.

Zambia's economy is heavily dependent on mining, in particular the mining of copper. Unfortunately, reserves of copper ore at some mines are becoming depleted, costs of production have increased, and the price of copper on the world market has slumped. There is thus a great need to broaden the base of the economy. Agriculture is relatively poorly developed, however, and major investment in manufacturing industry did not take place until after independence. State involvement in all aspects of the economy has been a feature of independent Zambia and has created a highly centralized and bureaucratic economic structure, although changes in the political structure of the country in the early 1990s were accompanied by efforts to increase private investment and involvement, particularly in the industrial sector.

Shortly after independence, Zambia embarked on a program of national development planning, the Transitional Development Plan, preceding the First National Development Plan of 1966–71. This later plan, which provided for major investment in infrastructure and manufacturing, was largely implemented and generally successful (which was not true of subsequent plans).

A major switch in the structure of the country's economy came with the Mulungushi Reforms of April 1968, in which the government declared its intention to acquire an equity holding (usually 51 percent or more) in a number of key foreign-owned firms, to be controlled by the Industrial Development Corporation (INDECO). By January 1970 a majority holding had been acquired in the Zambian operations of the two major foreign mining corporations, the Anglo American Corporation and the Rhodesia Selection Trust (RST), which became the Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines (NCCM) and Roan Consolidated Mines (RCM), respectively. A new parastatal body, the Mining Development Corporation (MINDECO), was created. Government control was later extended to insurance companies and building societies, which were placed within a new parastatal body, the Finance and Development Corporation (FINDECO). The banks successfully resisted takeover. INDECO, MINDECO, and FINDECO were brought together in 1971 under an omnibus parastatal, the Zambia Industrial and Mining Corporation (ZIMCO), to create one of the largest companies in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1973 management contracts under which the day-to-day operations of the mines had been carried out by Anglo American and RST were ended. In 1982 NCCM and RCM were merged into the giant Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd. (ZCCM).

Programs of nationalization, particularly of the mining industry, were ill-timed. The massive increase in the price of oil in 1973 (which greatly inflated the import bill) was followed by a slump in copper prices in 1975 and a diminution of export earnings. The price of copper, which in 1973 accounted for 95 percent of all export earnings, halved in value on the world market in 1975. By 1976 there was a balance-of-payments crisis, and the country became massively indebted to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). There was little hope of putting the proposals of the Third National Development Plan (1978–83) into effect: crisis management, not long-term planning, was the reality.

By the mid-1980s Zambia had become one of the most indebted nations in the world relative to its gross domestic product (GDP). As the price for its continuing support, the IMF was able to insist that the Zambian government introduce programs aimed at stabilizing the economy and restructuring to reduce dependence on copper. Measures included ending price controls, currency devaluation, reductions in government expenditure, the ending of subsidies on food and fertilizer, and increased prices for farm produce. The removal of food subsidies caused massive increases in the price of basic foodstuffs and led to rioting. Unable to cope with internal opposition to the new policies, Zambia broke with the IMF in May 1987, introducing its own New Economic Recovery Programme in 1988; it subsequently moved toward a new understanding with the IMF in 1989. In a major policy turnabout in 1990, reflecting events in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the intention to partially privatize the parastatals was announced. The new government of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, which came into power in November 1991, promised to liberate the economy and introduce a free-market system.

The union movement, especially among the mine workers, has been a strong influence on political development since the 1930s, and President Frederick Chiluba, who succeeded the country's first president, Kenneth Kaunda, in 1991, had been leader of the trade union movement.

Copper, the basis of Zambia's prosperity in the first decade of independence, is a declining asset. Alternatives such as optical glass fibre have reduced market demand, and exhaustion of reserves in existing mining areas has led to increased costs. Large-scale mining could end by 2005, although small-scale operations will continue long after that. Cobalt occurs in association with copper. Lead and zinc mining at Kabwe began in 1906, predating the large-scale mining of copper. Underground mining at Kabwe has practically ended, although reworking of mine dumps has prolonged activity at the mine.

Other minerals worked in Zambia include gold and silver, both of which occur in association with copper. Iron ore is found near Mumbwa. There is an increasing awareness of the value of Zambia's gemstones. Emeralds, mined near Luanshya and Ndola, are cut and polished locally. Amethyst, aquamarine, and tourmaline are also mined. Large deposits of cosmetic-grade talc are found near Ndola and Lusaka. Limestone is widely found on the Copperbelt and in the Lusaka district and is quarried for stone, lime, and cement; associated with it are workable occurrences of marble.

The country once relied on coal carried by rail from Hwange in what is now Zimbabwe, but, following Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965, relatively poor-grade coal deposits were developed at Maamba in the Gwembe area, adjacent to Lake Kariba. Although there has been extensive prospecting for oil in the Karoo sediments of the middle Zambezi, the Luangwa, and the southwest, the search has so far been unsuccessful. Nor has prospecting for uranium discovered workable quantities of the ore.

There is, however, one rich energy source: hydropower (hydroelectric power). Large rivers descending from the plateau into the rifted troughs of the Zambezi provide scope for hydropower development, and a major gorge on the middle Zambezi enabled it to be dammed to form Lake Kariba (Kariba, Lake), the world's largest man-made lake of its time. The first power station at Kariba was built on the south side of the river, but a 600-megawatt station on the Zambian side was completed in 1977, shortly after the completion of a 900-megawatt station in the Kafue Gorge, south of Lusaka. There is an earlier power station at the Victoria Falls. Another dam on the Zambezi, which would need the collaboration of Zimbabwe, is projected at Batoka Gorge. Electricity distribution from Kariba extends north to the Copperbelt and southward across Zimbabwe. There are also links with Congo (Kinshasa) and peripheral areas of Botswana and Namibia.

Although contributing less than 15 percent of GDP, agriculture employs about 70 percent of the economically active population. Levels of commercialization are relatively low, and near-subsistence farming is widespread. Most agricultural produce is consumed within Zambia. A major objective of government policy is the expansion and diversification of the agricultural sector to take up the slack caused by the contraction of the mining industry. It would also contribute to lessening and perhaps reversing the rural-to-urban migration. For many years producer prices were kept low, farm incomes being depressed in favour of keeping living costs low in the towns. Increased producer prices have resulted in considerable urban unrest.

For many years the growth of maize (corn) was promoted by the use of hybrid varieties and subsidized fertilizers. It began to displace staples such as cassava, sorghum, and millet in areas not naturally suited to it (e.g., higher-rainfall areas of the north). The removal of fertilizer subsidies reversed that trend; in the north, cassava, the traditional staple, is regaining importance. Where conditions are favourable and there is good access to the markets, however, improved producer prices encourage the expansion of corn cultivation. Other crops include sorghum, bulrush millet, and finger millet. Sorghum is widespread in the middle Zambezi and west of the Copperbelt. Finger millet is essentially a crop of the northeast, whereas bulrush millet is extensive in the west and along the middle Zambezi. Of the leguminous crops, groundnuts (peanuts) are most widespread, especially in the eastern part of the country and in the sandy areas of the west. Secondary food crops include sweet potatoes, taro, yams, peas, beans, pumpkins, sugarcane, bananas, rice, and a variety of other fruits and vegetables.

On the poorer soils of the wetter north and northeast, cultivation is mainly of a shifting (slash-and-burn agriculture) variety called chitemene, whereby trees (or their branches) are cut and then piled in the centre of the clearing for burning, the crop being planted in the ashes. Over much of the rest of the country, semipermanent hoe cultivation predominates; in swamp and lakeshore areas, it is combined with fishing. Oxen are used on the sandy soils of the west.

Large-scale commercial farming has restricted distribution, mainly along the Line of Rail (notably on the Tonga plateau in the south, near Lusaka and Kabwe, on the Copperbelt, and near Mkushi) but also in the Chipata area and around Mbala at the southern end of Lake Tanganyika. At independence almost all of the 1,200 commercial farmers were of European or South African origin, but about half left in the years immediately following. Many farms were taken over by the state, but state farms have not been a success. Some were taken over, not always successfully, by industrial companies that were encouraged to invest in agriculture. The main crop is maize. Virginia tobacco has lost some of its popularity, although smaller growers have been encouraged to produce it. There has been increasing export by air of horticultural produce to European markets.

Irrigated agriculture is increasingly important. Started in 1966, the first successful scheme was at Nakambala on the south side of the Kafue Flats, where the Zambia Sugar Company has more than 25,000 acres under sugarcane. Their refinery also serves nearby smallholder cane-growing projects. Zambia provides for its own needs and exports sugar. At Mpongwe, south of Luanshya, a major irrigation scheme produces wheat and coffee. Kasama in the northeast is the location of two other arabica coffee schemes, and there is a tea estate at Kawambwa in the far north. Wheat and cotton are produced at Sinazongwe and Sinazeze in the Gwembe (middle Zambezi) valley, using water from Lake Kariba. Cotton cultivation was encouraged by the construction of textile mills, first at Kafue, later at Kabwe.

Cattle are found only in the drier, tsetse-free parts of the country with open woodland vegetation: mainly the Tonga plateau, the Kafue Flats, and the floodplain of the upper Zambezi (tsetse flies are prevalent along much of the middle Zambezi). Cattle that form part of traditional farming systems often do not enter the commercial market, which is supplied mainly by larger herds kept on commercial farms, especially near Lusaka and in the south.

Soil erosion is a perennial concern in the heavily settled areas of the south and east, while the middle Zambezi valley and the southwest are worst affected in drought years.

Some 26,000 square miles of Zambia are classified as forest reserves, although the greater part of the country is wooded but not protected in this way. The main commercial timber areas are on the Copperbelt, where there have been plantings of exotic softwoods to supply the needs of the mining industry, and in the southwest, where there are extensive areas of Zambezi teak. A mill at Mulobezi, which supplies timber products, is linked to Livingstone by a light railway. A major concern is forest destruction due to charcoal burning; in the towns, charcoal is the most popular cooking fuel. The government has supported attempts to introduce energy-efficient charcoal stoves.

Zambia has relatively rich fisheries (commercial fishing) based on its many lakes, swamps, and seasonally inundated floodplains. Of particular importance is the Luapula valley, which supplies the Copperbelt. Lake Tanganyika is famous for Nile perch and kapenta, a freshwater sardine. Lusaka is supplied mainly from the Kafue Flats and the Lukanga Swamp. Of lesser importance is the fishery on the upper Zambezi. There has been a revival of fishing on Lake Kariba, interrupted by the conflict with Rhodesia during the 1970s. There is a fishery of kapenta (a deep-feeding species caught at night using special lamps to direct their movements), which had been introduced successfully from Lake Tanganyika, although the fishery is better established in Zimbabwe, where fishing was not stopped by the war. Most fish is smoked before being trucked to market.

The Copperbelt is the country's industrial heart, the focus of mining and ancilliary industries. Local people have worked the ores for many centuries, but commercial mining essentially dates back to the 1920s. The ores occur at depth in a synclinal structure so that deep-shaft mining is normal, although there has been some opencut mining. Exhaustion of reserves and the increasing costs of mining led to the closure of the Kansanshi and Chambishi mines in the mid-1980s, and rationalization of operations in an attempt to contain costs has closed down some refining and ancilliary plants. There is much mining-related industrial activity on the Copperbelt, and a major downturn in mining activity would have severe repercussions for the area as a whole. The other major mining centre is at Kabwe, where the lead and zinc mine has been virtually exhausted. Mining elsewhere, with the exception of coal at Maambwe, is mainly small-scale.

Manufacturing industry was poorly developed before independence, most investment in this sector during the federal period being made in what is now Zimbabwe. However, during the First National Development Plan major investment was made in manufacturing, particularly import substitution. Major plants under the ZIMCO umbrella produce fertilizers, explosives, tires, hessian and grain bags, textiles, glass, cement, batteries, and foodstuffs (brewing and corn-milling being especially important). Automobiles are assembled at Livingstone.

Tourism is based mainly on game viewing and the Victoria Falls (which also offers white-water rafting in the gorges below). Although appealing to a limited market, hunting safaris are a major source of income. Tourism promotion is coordinated by the Ministry of Tourism and the National Tourist Board. Development has been handicapped by the limited number of hotel beds, poor communications, and the few alternative attractions.

As a landlocked country, Zambia is reliant on neighbouring countries for access to the sea, and civil strife in three of these has closed key routes to the coast for much of the period since independence. At that time most imports and exports were handled by the railway that linked the country with the ports of South Africa and Mozambique via Rhodesia. The 3-foot-6-inch- (1,065-millimetre-) gauge line crossed the Zambezi at the Victoria Falls in 1905, reaching the Copperbelt in 1909. To the north it was linked with the Benguela Railway in 1931, giving access to the Angolan port of Lobito.

After the Rhodesian UDI, in accordance with the sanctions policy of the United Nations, Zambia took measures to reduce its dependence on routes to the south. Much traffic was diverted to the Benguela Railway before civil war in Angola closed that route, and a project to link Zambia with the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam was revived. Failing to obtain Western support, the two countries turned to China for help to build the 1,060-mile Tan-Zam railway, completed in 1976. Unfortunately, the railway, which links with the older railway at Kapiri Mposhi, has not carried the projected volume of traffic, owing partly to congestion at the port of Dar es Salaam and partly to problems with track and rolling stock.

Political changes in southern Africa have lessened the need to use northern routes. South African ports are being used more, and copper can also be trucked through Namibia's Caprivi Strip and by rail from Grootfontein to Walvis Bay.

Much was done to improve the road system. The Great North Road was tarred to the Tanzanian border at Tunduma, and the Great East Road to Chipata and the Malaŵian border. Malaŵi has since extended its railway from the capital, Lilongwe, to the Zambian border at Mchinji, but Zambia has not built the 26-mile link with Chipata. Upstream of the Victoria Falls the Zambezi is unbridged, and roads on the Kalahari Sands are especially difficult.

An eight-inch petroleum pipeline from Dar es Salaam to Zambia's Indeni refinery in Ndola was completed in 1968.

Zambia's large rivers are relatively little used for transportation because of the presence of rapids and waterfalls and marked seasonal flow variations. Local transport is important on lakes. Mpulungu, a small port on the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, handles minor amounts of traffic bound for Rwanda and Burundi and links with the East African rail system.

Zambian Airways Corporation operates domestic and international services. Scheduled internal service by other operators was first allowed in 1990. The main airports are at Lusaka, Ndola, and Livingstone, but there are 12 secondary and 31 minor airports, in addition to private airstrips.

Zambia's initial constitution was abandoned in August 1973 when it became a one-party state. The constitution of the Second Republic provided for a “one-party participatory democracy,” with the United National Independence Party (UNIP) the only legal political party. In response to mounting pressures within the country, the constitution was changed in 1991 to allow the reintroduction of a multiparty system.

Under the terms of the new constitution, the president, who is head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces, is elected by universal adult suffrage to a five-year term of office. He is empowered to appoint the vice president, the chief justice, and members of the High Court on the advice of the Judicial Services Commission. During the president's absence, his duties are assumed by the vice president. The president also appoints a cabinet from elected members of the National Assembly. The cabinet consists of 25 ministers, 30 deputy ministers (some ministries have 2), and 9 provincial deputy ministers.

The legislature, called the National Assembly, has 150 members, and elections to it are held every five years. Members of Parliament (as members of the National Assembly are usually called) are elected by universal adult suffrage. There is a 27-member House of Chiefs, with a two-year-term rotating membership. It has no legislative function: it may consider bills but not block their passage.

Central government is represented throughout Zambia by the provincial government system, by which resident ministers are appointed by the president to each of the nine provinces (including Lusaka Province, created 1976). Each minister is the president's direct representative and responsible for the coordination of policy and for liaison with district councils.

The nine provinces are divided into 55 districts, each of which has a district council chairman responsible to the provincial deputy minister; the district council chairman is particularly concerned with political and economic developments. His civil service counterpart is the district executive secretary. The cities of Lusaka, Ndola, and Kitwe have councils and mayors, but the formerly separate management of mine townships on the Copperbelt has been abolished.

The court system consists of the Supreme Court, the High Court, subordinate magistrate's courts, and local courts. Because the law administered by all except the local courts is based on English common law, decisions of the higher British courts are of persuasive value; in fact, a few statutes of the British Parliament that were declared by ordinance (decree) to apply to Zambia are in force so far as circumstances permit. Most of the laws presently on the statute book, however, have been locally enacted by ordinance or, since independence, by Zambian acts.

The Supreme Court consists of the chief justice and four other justices; it is the court of last resort. The High Court, presided over by a chief justice, has 12 puisne judges and is basically an appellate court. There are three classes of magistrate's courts, with progressive degrees of criminal and civil jurisdiction. Local courts consist of a president sitting alone or with other members, all appointed by the Judicial Services Commission. Jurisdiction is conferred by the minister of justice and may encompass any written law, but punishment powers are limited. Local courts also deal with civil cases of a customary nature. Customary law is followed when it is not repugnant to justice or equity and when it is not incompatible with other legislation.

The judiciary remains formally independent, and in this respect Zambia contrasts favourably with many other African countries. The president appoints the chief justice and, on the advice of the Judicial Services Commission, also appoints other judges; however, the constitution severely restricts the president's powers of dismissal, and on occasion judges have not shrunk from challenging the authority of the government or party. At the same time, the scope of the judiciary was seriously limited by presidential powers of preventive detention under emergency regulations brought in at the time of Rhodesian UDI in November 1965 and subsequently regularly renewed by the National Assembly. The ending of these state-of-emergency regulations on Nov. 8, 1991, was one of the first acts of the new government.

At independence Zambia had one of the most poorly developed education systems of Britain's former colonies, with just 109 university graduates and less than 0.5 percent of the population estimated to have completed primary education. The country has since invested heavily in education at all levels, and well over 90 percent of children in the 7–13 age group attend school. However, of those who enroll for the seven years of primary education, less than 20 percent enter secondary school, and only 2 percent of the 20–24 age group enter university or some other form of higher education.

The University of Zambia was opened in Lusaka in 1966, graduating its first students in 1969. In 1979 legislation was passed creating a federal university; a second campus was established at the Zambia Institute of Technology at Kitwe. In 1988 the federal structure was abandoned, and Zambia now has two universities: the University of Zambia at Lusaka and the Copperbelt University at Kitwe. The former offers courses in agriculture, education, engineering, humanities and social sciences, law, medicine, mining, natural sciences, and veterinary medicine, but only business and industrial studies and environmental studies are available at Kitwe. The basic program is four years, although engineering and medical courses are of five and seven years' duration, respectively.

Other tertiary-level institutions are vocationally focused and include the Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts and Commerce and the Natural Resources Development College, both in Lusaka, as well as teacher-training colleges.

Early developments in continuing education have been undermined owing to underfunding. A 1976 initiative to introduce a major reform of the educational system was thwarted by the economic downturn, and underfunding is lowering the quality of education.

The ailing economy in the 1980s adversely affected the quality of health care available to the population at the time that AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) was beginning to have a major impact. Zambia is one of the southern African countries most severely affected by AIDS, with an estimated 20 percent of the urban population HIV-positive. Early deaths from AIDS-related illnesses are depriving the country of expensively trained skilled professionals and creating a growing number of orphaned children. Malnutrition, caused by poverty, is widespread, particularly in the rural areas, and is a major cause of death among children. The most prevalent tropical diseases are malaria, schistosomiasis (bilharziasis), and parasitic infections such as hookworm and leprosy. Leprosy has been contained, and leprosariums have given way to outpatient treatment. Malaria is increasing in the urban areas as programs to control the anopheles mosquito that spreads the disease have largely broken down. schistosomiasis, a debilitating disease spread by waterborne snails, is widely found in riverine areas. Sleeping sickness, spread by the tsetse fly, is prevalent in the more sparsely populated tsetse-infected areas. Smallpox and typhoid fever have been successfully controlled through immunization programs. By contrast, there have been major outbreaks of cholera and dysentery in Lusaka and the Copperbelt, undoubtedly associated with increasing poverty and deficiencies in sanitation and community health programs. Blindness is a particular problem in the Luapula valley.

Tuberculosis and meningitis, related to AIDS, are now major causes of adult and infant mortality. Other common causes of death are respiratory infections, accidents and injuries (relative to the number of vehicles, the number of motor vehicle accidents is exceptionally high), and gastrointestinal disorders. Measles is a common cause of death in children. Death from heart disease is rising among the more affluent.

In the years following independence, considerable investment was made in the hospital system, which includes 12 general hospitals in the main towns, many smaller hospitals (some of which are mission-run), and rural health centres. The University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka is used by the medical school of the University of Zambia, which graduated its first doctors in 1972. A government Flying Doctor Service provides medical services in remote rural areas. Psychiatric services are based at the Chainama Hills Hospital in Lusaka, to which are linked small psychiatric units in other centres. There is a specialist pediatric hospital in Ndola. Despite local training, Zambia suffers from a shortage of doctors and other specialist staff. This is particularly true of the rural areas, although there are some excellent mission hospitals. There is a widespread belief in alternative medicine, including reliance upon traditional healers and witchcraft.

In traditional Zambian society, kinship groups care for the well-being of their members. In the towns, however, family ties have weakened, necessitating the development of government welfare services concerned with juvenile delinquency, adoption, and the care of the aged, indigent, and handicapped. Voluntary agencies, many drawing upon funds from outside Zambia, make a major contribution to the care of the less fortunate in society. The contributory National Provident Fund provides retirement benefits for those in paid employment (a minority of the labour force, including many town dwellers, are engaged in informal employment). Refugees have been a major problem, notably those fleeing conflicts in Angola and Mozambique, and the country once gave haven to many who had fled from Rhodesia during UDI and from South Africa.

Housing is a problem in the urban areas owing to the high level of rural-to-urban migration. Public housing could be made available only to a few, and shanty compounds sprang up to house the majority. “Site and service schemes” designate areas for self-help housing and provide basic services such as roads and water. In Lusaka the World Bank assisted with major schemes to upgrade existing squatter areas. Nevertheless, there is a sharp contrast between the spacious bungalows in the leafy suburbs, many built for Europeans before independence but now occupied by wealthy Zambians, and the cement-block and tin-roofed houses of the dusty and crowded townships.

Traditional Zambian art consists chiefly of wood carving, pottery making, and basket weaving. Among musical instruments, drums are the most widely used, but there also are stringed bows, flutes, horns and pipes, xylophones, bells, rattles, and the kalimba, or “African piano,” made of strips of steel attached to a small board and vibrated by the fingers. Music, dancing, and song are used in tribal rituals and celebrations, as well as for entertainment, varying in form among ethnic groups. With the object of preserving cultural diversity, a government initiative in the 1980s led to the revival of many traditional ceremonies. Some, such as the kuomboka of the Lozi, survived essentially unchanged; others have taken up new forms. The National Dance Troupe performs the traditional dances of many groups. There is a national museum at Livingstone and another on the Copperbelt. The Moto-Moto Museum at Mbala focuses on the traditions of the Bemba people, and there are small field museums at some national monuments. Relics of the country's past are the concern of the Commission for the Preservation of Natural and Historical Monuments and Relics.

Since the 1950s the cultural scene has been transformed by large-scale urbanization and exposure to exotic influences from Europe, the Americas, and other parts of Africa. Radio and television (one channel only and restricted to the Line of Rail, Chipata, Mongu, and Kasama) have sped this process. Various forms of theatre have flourished. In the last years of colonial rule, dance drama was developed for nationalist ends; the Chikwakwa Theatre, based at the University of Zambia, pioneered politically radical popular drama in the early years of independence. In the 1980s, aid agencies and other bodies promoted “theatre for development,” often unscripted and in vernacular languages, and government departments have used drama to communicate agricultural and health messages.

The once-noted independence of the press was compromised by government and party control: ownership of the Times of Zambia passed to the party in 1982, and the Zambia Daily Mail has been in government ownership since 1965. The church-owned weekly National Mirror, founded in 1970, was able to take a more independent line, as has the Weekly Post, which first appeared in 1991 in the wake of moves toward a more pluralist political system.

The Zambia Publishing House (formerly the Kenneth Kaunda Foundation) is a government-backed publisher of the works of Zambian authors and school textbooks. The few other publishers are mainly church-supported. Zambian scholars have contributed to knowledge in a wide range of disciplines, often in locally published academic journals, though opportunities for research have been restricted in recent years by general economic difficulties.

Stone tools attributable to early types of humans have been found near Victoria Falls and in the far northeast, near Kalambo Falls. In 1921, excavations at Kabwe revealed the almost complete skull of Homo sapiens rhodesiensis (“Broken Hill Man”), which may be well over 100,000 years old. However, by 20,000 BCE the only surviving type of human throughout the Old World was the ancestor of modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, who developed the use of spears, the bow and arrow, game traps, and grindstones. Remains of such industries have been found in much of central and northern Zambia, sometimes near lakes and rivers but often in caves and rock-shelters.

During the 1st millennium CE, Zambia was occupied by migrants from farther north who probably spoke Bantu languages; they certainly cultivated crops and kept domestic stock. Traces of ironworking in central and western Zambia have been dated to the first five or six centuries CE. Iron tools and weapons greatly increased mastery over both man and nature and, together with food production, promoted population growth. Stone-using hunters and gatherers were liable to be overrun and absorbed by the food producers, though some survived on the edges of farming zones until a few centuries ago. The complex layers of paintings found in rock-shelters in northeastern Zambia indicate that the homes of stone-using hunters became the shrines of invading farmers.

In central Zambia, by the 6th century CE, the first food producers worked copper as well as iron. By about 1000 CE, copper ingots were being made at Kansanshi, at the western end of the Copperbelt, which implies that copper was being traded extensively and perhaps used as currency.

Early in the 2nd millennium CE, cattle keeping became more intensive on the Batoka Plateau of southern Zambia, while cotton spinning and pipe smoking were introduced. The associated pottery seems directly ancestral to that made locally in the 20th century. Similar evidence of cultural continuity over a long period has also been found in the resemblance between modern pottery in central, northern, and eastern Zambia and a kind of pottery that has been dated to the 12th century CE. The differences in pottery traditions have been ascribed to immigration. They also indicate thicker settlement of woodland through the adoption of chitemene cultivation, widespread in Zambia even today; this technique depends heavily on the use of iron axes, because seed is sown in the ashes of branches lopped from trees.

In southern Zambia, archaeology has thrown light on both the emergence of class distinctions and the beginnings of trade with the east coast. About the 14th century a few people were buried wearing ornaments of seashells and exotic glass beads near Kalomo and at Ingombe Ilede, near the confluence of the Zambezi (Zambezi River) and Kafue (Kafue River) rivers. The latter burials also included gold beads, copper ingots, and iron bells of a kind later associated with chieftainship. These metals would have come from south of the Zambezi, but they were probably being reexported down the river by Muslim traders, either Arab or African.

The period between about 1500 and 1800 remains relatively obscure. This was when copper was most intensively mined at Kansanshi, but it is not known who was buying it. The main evidence for these centuries consists of oral traditions. In much of Zambia, from the upper Kafue to the Malawi border, there are legends of tribes being founded by chiefly families who came from Luba (Luba-Lunda states) country in what is now southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Such stories should not be taken at face value; they dramatize prolonged processes of population drift and the spread of cultural influences. By the 18th century, small-scale chieftainship was probably widespread in northern and eastern Zambia, but few of the tribal names current today would have meant much; such names refer not to long-enduring communities but to changing perceptions of cultural and political differences. In the early 19th century, however, there were at least four areas in which the growth of kingdoms was strengthening the sense of tribal identity: in the east, among the Chewa; in the northeast, among the Bemba; on the lower Luapula, among the Lunda (who had indeed invaded from the west about 1740); and on the upper Zambezi, among the Luyana (later called Lozi). In the Lunda and Luyana kingdoms a prosperous valley environment encouraged dense settlement and prompted the development of relatively centralized government.

Trade between Zambia and the Western world began with the Portuguese in Mozambique. Early in the 17th century the Portuguese ousted Muslims from the gold trade of central Africa; early in the 18th century they founded trading posts at Zumbo and Feira, at the confluence of the Zambezi and Luangwa (Luangwa River) rivers. By 1762 they were regularly acquiring ivory and copper from Zambians in exchange for cotton cloth. During the later 18th century, slave-owning Goans (Goa) and Portuguese mined gold and hunted elephants among the southern Chewa. Their activities were reported to Kazembe III, the Lunda king on the Luapula, by Bisa traders who exported his ivory and copper to the Yao in Malawi. Kazembe already had indirect access to European goods from the west coast; he now hoped to cut out his African middlemen. One Goan visited Kazembe and was warmly received, but, though the Portuguese government dispatched further expeditions in 1798 and 1831, they came to nothing, mainly because the Portuguese on the Zambezi were turning their attention to exporting slaves rather than ivory or gold. Western Zambia was also beginning to be enmeshed in the Portuguese slave trade, directed to Brazil. From the early 19th century African traders from Angola bought slaves to the north of the Lozi kingdom, though the Lozi themselves kept servile labour for production at home.

During the second half of the 19th century Zambia was convulsed by traders, raiders, and invaders who came from all surrounding areas. From about 1840 to 1864 the Lozi kingdom was ruled by the Kololo, warrior-herdsmen who had fled north from Sotho country. In the 1860s and '70s the northern Chewa were conquered by a group of Ngoni, who had also come from the far south. Meanwhile, the Bemba and Kazembe's Lunda began selling ivory and slaves to Arabs and Africans from the east coast. At the same time, ivory and slaves were hunted in central Zambia by Chikunda adventurers armed with guns, and South African traders were buying ivory from the Lozi. A few rulers contrived to turn such trade to their own advantage, and the general rise in demand for goods stimulated local production of ironwork, salt, tobacco, and food; indeed, several crops of American origin were introduced, such as corn (maize), cassava (manioc), peanuts (groundnuts), and sugarcane. Much of Zambia was devastated by marauders, however.

At the end of the 19th century Zambia came under British (British Empire) rule. British interest in the region had first been aroused by the missionary-explorer David Livingstone (Livingstone, David), who crossed Zambia during three great expeditions between 1853 and his death, near Lake Bangweulu (Bangweulu), in 1873. Livingstone's reports of the expanding slave trade inspired other missionaries to come to central Africa and continue the struggle against it, but it was the mining magnate Cecil Rhodes (Rhodes, Cecil) who ensured that so much country north as well as south of the Zambezi came within a British sphere of influence during the “Scramble for Africa.” In 1889 the British government granted a charter to Rhodes's British South Africa Company (BSAC), bestowing powers of administration and enabling it to stake claims to African territory at the expense of other European powers. The unique butterfly shape of Zambia resulted from agreements in the 1890s between Britain and Germany, Portugal, and the Belgian king Leopold II, and these in turn rested on treaties, mostly stereotyped in form, between Rhodes's agents and African chiefs.

At this stage there was little resistance to white intrusion. The most immediate threat to African land and labour came in Ngoniland, thought by whites to be rich in gold, and the Ngoni duly fought company troops in 1898. The Bemba, however, faced no such challenge and in any case were deeply divided, while the Lozi king believed that alliance with the company would protect his empire against both the Portuguese and the Ndebele. It is also likely that disease and famine undermined the will to resist: there were smallpox epidemics in the early 1890s, widespread rinderpest in 1892–95, and locust plagues throughout the decade.

At first the BSAC administered its territory north of the Zambezi in two parts, North-Eastern and North-Western Rhodesia. In 1911 these were united to form Northern Rhodesia, with its capital at Livingstone, near Victoria Falls. Among a population of perhaps one million, there were about 1,500 white residents; some had come to mine surface deposits of copper, and a few, mostly from South Africa, farmed on the plateau east of Livingstone. However, the BSAC regarded the country chiefly as a source of labour (forced labour) for gold and coal mines in Southern Rhodesia and for the copper mines in Katanga, in the Belgian Congo, which in 1910 were linked by rail to Southern Rhodesia and the east-coast port of Beira, Mozam. By then company officials had been posted to most parts of Northern Rhodesia and levied taxes (taxation) in order to force Africans to seek work; such pressure sometimes provoked violent, but small-scale, resistance.

The British government hoped to increase white settlement as part of a wider strategy to strengthen British influence between South Africa and Kenya. Land was reserved for white ownership along the railway line, in the far north, and in the east; around these areas African reserves were marked out in 1928–30. This soon led to overcrowding, soil exhaustion, and food shortage; yet few whites took up the land available to them. By 1930 it was clear that copper was the country's most promising resource. Huge deposits had been located far beneath the headwaters of the Kafue and were mined by companies mostly financed from South Africa, through the Anglo American Corporation, and the United States, through the Rhodesian Selection Trust.

In 1930–31 prices for copper collapsed, partly as a result of the worldwide depression. However, the new mines enjoyed a comparative advantage, since they worked high-grade ores at relatively low cost. For skilled labour they depended on whites, who had to be paid what they might have earned in South Africa; African labour, however, was cheap and abundant, and employers accepted a high turnover rate to avoid providing the amenities that would encourage permanent African settlement in urban areas. From 1935 copper prices rose sharply, and by 1938 Northern Rhodesia contributed a substantial amount to the world's total output of copper.

Yet copper exports did not confer much prosperity. Near the railway both African and white farmers grew food for the mines, but most African farmers were too remote from the market to be able to earn a cash income. More than half the able-bodied male population worked for wages away from home, and as many of these worked outside the territory as within it. On the Copperbelt itself, low wages and poor conditions provoked Africans to strike at three mines in 1935. Nor were rising copper sales of much benefit to the government (whose capital was moved to Lusaka in 1935). The mineral rights were owned by the BSAC, which duly exacted royalties. Taxation was levied on what profits remained, but half was retained by the British government, which made only tiny grants for economic development. In 1938 these arrangements were criticized by a visiting financial expert, Sir Alan Pim. In a report to the Colonial Office, he urged more public investment in roads, schools, and health services, for Africans as well as whites. Missionaries ran many primary schools, but in 1942 only 35 Africans were receiving secondary education.

When World War II broke out in 1939, Britain contracted to buy the whole output of the Copperbelt. British dependence on undisturbed copper production meant that white mine workers were allowed to maintain an industrial colour bar. Nonetheless, a second strike by African mine workers, in 1940, caused a revision of wage scales to take account of accumulating experience and skill. After the war the new Labour (Labour Party) government in Britain began to promote the formation of African trade unions (organized labour), and by 1949 half the African mine workers in Northern Rhodesia belonged to a single union. In the same year, new legislation confirmed that (in contrast to South Africa and Southern Rhodesia) African unions had the same bargaining rights as those of white workers. Meanwhile, between 1942 and 1946, African teachers, clerks, foremen, and clergy had formed welfare societies both in the mining towns and in rural areas; in 1948 these gave rise to the Northern Rhodesia Congress. Some of its members sat on the African Representative Council set up by the government in 1946; this body had no power, but it criticized political and social conditions, especially the informal colour bar, and from 1948 it elected two Africans to sit on the Legislative Council. In the countryside “indirect rule” through chiefs became more broadly representative.

In some respects, Africans made important advances in the first postwar years. On the other hand, these advances also strengthened white aspirations to settler self-government, as in Southern Rhodesia. Although whites formed less than 2 percent of the Northern Rhodesian population, their numbers rose between 1946 and 1951 from 22,000 to 37,000, partly because of immigration from Britain. The Legislative Council included eight elected white members, and in deference to them a large-scale development plan was drastically revised between 1947 and 1953 at the expense of African education. Yet this was not enough: to many whites the best hope of entrenching white supremacy seemed to lie in amalgamation with the south. This ambition gained support from British politicians and civil servants who feared that Southern Rhodesia would otherwise fall under the sway of the Afrikaner nationalists who had come to power in South Africa in 1948 (see National Party). In 1951 the British Labour government was replaced by Conservatives (Conservative Party) less concerned to avoid alienating African opinion. Despite widespread popular protest, in which chiefs and Congress combined, Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland were brought together in the Central African Federation (Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Federation of) in 1953.

The federation was a curious and unstable compromise. Its government was based in Southern Rhodesia, which also dominated the federal parliament. It had wide powers over all three territories, though in the north Britain retained control over questions of African land, education, and political status. At first, African suspicions of federation were blunted in Northern Rhodesia by an economic boom. Copper prices had risen steeply following sterling (pound sterling) devaluation in 1949 and the outbreak of war in Korea (Korean War) in 1950; the mining companies finally began to pay regular dividends, while the Northern Rhodesian government received a share of royalties. Following a major African strike in 1952, the real wages of African mine workers at last moved upward. The companies increased their use of machinery and African skills; in 1955 the industrial colour bar was breached, and a select minority of African workers were encouraged to live out their working lives in the mining areas: “stabilized” labour began to replace oscillating migrant labour.

In 1956, however, the copper boom came to an end. Whites in Northern Rhodesia became increasingly aware of how far the federal tax system channeled copper profits into Southern Rhodesia. Many Africans were thrown out of work, while little had been done to help African farming or education, despite federal propaganda for “partnership.” A new generation of leaders in Congress wanted Northern Rhodesia to become an independent African state, as Ghana had become in 1957. In 1958, led by Kenneth Kaunda (Kaunda, Kenneth), a former teacher and civil servant, these radicals split off from Congress to found the Zambia African National Congress and its successor, the United National Independence Party (UNIP). Britain accepted that Africans would have to be given more power than the federal government was willing to concede. In 1962 UNIP organized a massive campaign of civil disobedience, but it agreed to take part in elections under a new constitution, and an election later that year gave Africans a majority in the legislature. The federation was dissolved at the end of 1963. Early in 1964 an election based on universal adult suffrage gave UNIP a decisive majority, and it was supported by nearly a third of the white voters. On October 24 the country became the independent Republic of Zambia, within the Commonwealth and with Kaunda serving as executive president.

During the early years of independence, Zambia was comparatively prosperous. Copper prices rose steadily from 1964 to 1970, boosted by the Vietnam War, and Zambia became the world's third largest producer of copper. Meanwhile, the leakage of copper profits abroad was greatly reduced. In 1964 the government acquired the mineral rights of the BSAC, and thereafter it also increased mining taxation. The country embarked on long-overdue investment in communications and social services. In 1960 there had been only 2,500 Africans in secondary schools; by 1971 there were 54,000. At independence there were fewer than 100 Zambian university graduates; in 1965 the University of Zambia was founded, and by 1971 it had 2,000 students. Zambians finally began to predominate in the upper ranks of the civil service, the army, business, and the professions. The copper industry still relied heavily on white expertise, but the colour bar had vanished, and in 1966 black mine workers secured a large increase in pay, which soon affected wage levels generally.

On the other hand, Zambia incurred massive costs from the survival of white supremacy across the Zambezi. Following (Southern) Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965, the United Nations imposed sanctions intended to isolate that country, but these bore much more heavily on Zambia. Copper exports were expensively rerouted northward, and a tarmac road and oil pipeline were built to Dar es Salaam, Tanz. Trade with Rhodesia was steadily reduced, and the border was finally closed in 1973. A new coal mine and new hydroelectric schemes made Zambia largely independent of the Rhodesian-controlled power station at the Kariba Dam (built in 1959). In 1970–75 China built a railway from the Copperbelt to Dar es Salaam, which committed Zambia and Tanzania to extensive trade with China.

National integration had been a major task for Zambia's leaders at independence. White settlers presented no great difficulty, and those farmers who stayed on were valued for their major contribution to food production. African “tribalism” was a more serious problem. This had less to do with the survival of precolonial political loyalties than with regional differences aggravated under colonial rule and the absence of any African lingua franca. The Lozi and other peoples in the west and south had long depended on labour migration across the Zambezi; the Copperbelt was dominated by Bemba speakers from the northeast. Kaunda did not himself belong to any major ethnic group, but his continuation in power required constant reshuffling of colleagues in the party and the government to preclude the emergence of a rival. In the name of national unity, UNIP sometimes made exaggerated claims to allegiance; such claims had brought it into armed conflict in 1964 with the Lumpa church founded by Alice Lenshina and in the late 1960s with Jehovah's Witnesses (Jehovah's Witness). UNIP also challenged the independence of the judiciary, though from 1969 the authority of the bench was strengthened by the appointment of black Zambian judges.

In the early 1970s Zambia's economic fortunes took a turn for the worse. Copper continued to provide the great bulk of export earnings, but prices fluctuated erratically and suffered a prolonged fall in 1975. The price of oil shot up in 1973, and inflation, already serious, rapidly increased. The government, committed to high spending, both public and private, reacted by borrowing heavily abroad and drawing on reserves. Investment declined, as did the efficiency of the transport network. State control of the mining industry, achieved in 1969–75, artificially prolonged its life but also increased the scope of corruption, as did parastatal corporations set up to promote industrial diversification.

The government became increasingly authoritarian. Kaunda felt threatened by critics at home and by the illegal Rhodesian regime, which harassed African guerrillas based in Zambia. UDI had already prompted Kaunda to impose emergency regulations, which thereafter were regularly renewed by the National Assembly and enabled the president to detain political opponents without trial. In 1973 the National Assembly approved a one-party constitution, and in 1975 UNIP took over Zambia's main newspaper. To some extent, fear of foreign attack diminished with the advent of independence in Portuguese Africa in 1975 and in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1980. But warfare in Angola and South African interference continued to provide pretexts to curb internal opposition.

Still more worrying, however, was the deepening economic crisis. Kaunda urged Zambians to look to agriculture rather than mining for a solution, but rural development policies, though consuming foreign aid, were mostly ill-conceived and failed to stem the historic drift to the towns. By 1980, out of a population of 5.7 million, more than 2 million lived in towns—many without jobs or housing—and inevitably, disease and crime flourished. Urban dwellers refused to pay the high prices that might have encouraged more farmers to produce for the market. Government subsidies sometimes bridged the gap, but their partial removal in 1986 and 1990 provoked major food riots in the towns. The restoration of subsidies in 1987 cost Zambia the support of the International Monetary Fund, though such support had been critical in coping with enormous foreign debts. Mounting discontent was reflected in recurrent closings of the University of Zambia, and in August 1991, in response to widespread pressure, the National Assembly abolished the one-party state. Multiparty elections were held in October, and Kaunda was decisively defeated by a trade union leader, Frederick Chiluba of the Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD). UNIP was left with fewer than one-sixth of the seats in the National Assembly.

Although the 1991 election positioned Zambia to become one of Africa's leaders in the area of political stability, its fulfillment of that promise was hampered by a variety of domestic issues. Chiluba's administration worked to bring about economic reform, but ironically economic progress was limited due to the widespread corruption that became a problem under his rule. In addition, Chiluba's presidency was marked by unsuccessful attempts by opposing forces to topple the ruling party, termed “coup attempts,” although they involved neither bloodshed nor widespread popular support.

On May 16, 1996, the National Assembly approved amendments to the constitution that declared that presidential candidates must be Zambian citizens born of parents who are Zambian by birth and that a candidate must not be a tribal chief. These amendments were widely viewed in both domestic and international circles as a deliberate attempt to prevent Kaunda—whose parents were from Malawi—and his running mate, Senior Chief Inyambo Yeta, from running for office. Despite broad opposition, however, the National Assembly passed the amendments, thereby preventing Kaunda's candidacy. Later that year Chiluba was reelected to a second term. Some viewed his reelection as an empty victory, however, since Kaunda had been prevented from contesting and UNIP had boycotted the elections.

Chiluba faced another weak coup attempt on Oct. 28, 1997, when a group of Zambian army commandos seized control of the national radio station in Lusaka and proclaimed that they had toppled Chiluba's government; within hours, however, the group was overpowered by Zambian troops loyal to the president. Several people were later charged in connection with the event, including Kaunda, who was arrested on December 25. He was released six days later, but he was placed under house arrest until June 1998, when all charges were withdrawn.

Discontent with the state of the economy was evident in May 2001 when the country's public sector workers went on strike, demanding an increase in salaries and improved working conditions. The strike lasted several weeks and had a detrimental effect on the daily functioning of the country, closing schools and hospital wards and bringing the judicial system to a halt. The government resolved the strike in July, just days before Zambia was to host an international summit. Chiluba was also concerned with the growing refugee population in the country: beginning in 1999 and continuing for several years, Zambia received more than 200,000 refugees fleeing conflicts in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola.

Limited to two terms in office, Chiluba stepped down in 2001. His handpicked successor, Levy Mwanawasa (Mwanawasa, Levy Patrick) of the MMD, was declared the winner of the hotly contested election and was sworn into office in January 2002.

Concerns over Mwanawasa's health emerged late in his first term, after he suffered a stroke in April 2006. He reassured the country that he was fit for office and stood for reelection later that year, garnering more than two-fifths of the vote. His nearest competitor, Michael Sata, made claims of voting irregularities and contested the election. Sporadic violence ensued in areas loyal to Sata, but the result of the election stood, and Mwanawasa was sworn in for his second term in October 2006. Mwanawasa again suffered a stroke in late June 2008. Rumours of his death circulated a few days later but were quickly refuted by Zambian government officials. He never fully recovered, however, and he died several weeks later. Under the terms of the constitution, a special election to choose a new president was eventually scheduled for later that year; in the interim, Vice President Rupiah Banda served as acting president. The election, held on October 30, was contested by four candidates, including Banda and Sata. Banda won, although by only a narrow margin, and Sata, who finished a close second, alleged that the vote had been flawed.