Zambia

Most of Zambia is a high plateau of miombo woodland between 1,000 and 1,400 m, cut by deep rift valleys. The Zambezi forms the southern border, dropping over Victoria Falls and flowing through Lake Kariba to the Lower Zambezi valley; the Luangwa, a tributary in an extension of the Great Rift, runs south through the east of the country.

The Luangwa's oxbow lagoons and seasonal floods feed one of the densest concentrations of hippos and leopards in Africa. The Kafue flows across the west-centre through Kafue National Park, one of the largest in Africa at about 22,400 km², and the Barotse floodplain in the far west fills every year to form the Lozi kingdom's seasonal lake.

Zambia also has a large share of Africa's great lakes region: Lake Tanganyika in the north, Lake Mweru and the Bangweulu swamps, home of the shoebill. Kasanka, a small park, hosts perhaps 10 million straw-coloured fruit bats every November.

The country has three seasons: cool and dry (May–August), hot and dry (September–November) and rainy (December–April). Almost all its electricity comes from hydropower at Kariba and Kafue, which made the 2024 drought a national crisis.

Stone tools and the Broken Hill skull (Kabwe 1), about 300,000 years old, show a long human presence. Bantu-speaking farmers arrived over the first millennium AD, and Ingombe Ilede on the Zambezi was trading copper crosses and gold with the coast by the 14th century.

From the 16th to 19th centuries, groups moving out of the Luba and Lunda states of the Congo basin founded the Bemba kingdom in the north-east and the Kazembe kingdom on the Luapula. The Lozi built a kingdom on the Barotse floodplain; their annual Kuomboka, when the king's barge moves to higher ground as the flood rises, remains the country's best-known ceremony.

In the 1840s the Kololo, fleeing upheaval in South Africa, conquered the Lozi for a generation and gave the falls the name Mosi-oa-Tunya. The Ngoni arrived from the south in the 1830s and settled in the east, where their Nc'wala ceremony continues.

Over 70 ethnic groups and around 70 languages live in Zambia today. Traditional ceremonies, such as Kuomboka, Nc'wala and the Tonga Lwiindi, are public holidays in their regions and draw visitors.

David Livingstone crossed the region in the 1850s, reaching the falls in 1855 and dying in 1873 at Chitambo near Lake Bangweulu, where his heart is buried under a tree. His campaign against the slave trade was used to justify British expansion.

Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company took control in the 1890s through treaties with the Lozi king and others, and the territory became Northern Rhodesia, a British protectorate from 1924. Livingstone town was the capital until Lusaka replaced it in 1935.

Copper changed everything. Large-scale mining on the Copperbelt began in the late 1920s; towns such as Kitwe and Ndola grew around the mines, and a migrant workforce formed the backbone of later nationalist and labour movements.

From 1953 to 1963 Northern Rhodesia was joined with Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in the Central African Federation, which channelled copper wealth south to Salisbury and was bitterly opposed by African nationalists. The federation broke up in 1963.

Zambia became independent on 24 October 1964 under Kenneth Kaunda, whose philosophy of 'Zambian humanism' and slogan 'One Zambia, One Nation' aimed to bind many ethnic groups together. He made Zambia a one-party state in 1972 and nationalised the copper mines.

Zambia was a frontline state: it hosted the ANC, ZAPU and SWAPO, and paid for it with border closures and raids by Rhodesia and South Africa. The TAZARA railway, built with Chinese help from 1970 to 1975, gave it an outlet to Dar es Salaam that avoided white-ruled neighbours.

Falling copper prices from the mid-1970s brought debt and austerity. After food riots and a coup attempt in 1990, Kaunda allowed multiparty elections and lost to Frederick Chiluba in 1991, then stepped down peacefully, a rare example at the time.

Power has since changed hands peacefully several times, including the 2021 defeat of Edgar Lungu by Hakainde Hichilema amid a debt default. Zambia completed a debt restructuring in 2024; general elections were scheduled for August 2026.

The walking safari as a tourist activity was developed in the Luangwa Valley in the 1950s–60s by Norman Carr, a game ranger who led small groups on foot with an armed scout. South Luangwa remains the place to do it, with trained guides and scouts from the Department of National Parks and Wildlife.

Zambia was also early in allowing night drives in national parks, which is why leopard sightings in South Luangwa are so reliable. Many bush camps are small, seasonal and rebuilt each year from reeds and canvas after the rains.

Poaching in the 1970s–90s wiped out the black rhino and halved elephant numbers. Rhinos have been reintroduced to North Luangwa since 2003, and partnerships with conservation groups now run parks such as North Luangwa, Liuwa Plain, Bangweulu and parts of Kafue.

Communities in game management areas around the parks share revenue from tourism and hunting concessions, and Conservation South Luangwa and similar groups work on snares and human-wildlife conflict.

About 21 million Zambians live in a young, fast-growing country; half are under 18. Lusaka and the Copperbelt are the urban centres, but most people farm maize and cassava in villages. English is official, while Bemba and Nyanja serve as lingua francas in the north and in Lusaka and the east.

Zambia was declared a Christian nation in 1991, and the constitution keeps the declaration. Church attendance is high, alongside respect for chiefs and ancestral practice.

Nshima, stiff maize porridge, is the meal; relishes include ifisashi (greens in groundnut sauce), kapenta, bream and village chicken. Chikanda, made from wild orchid tubers, is a delicacy whose popularity threatens the orchids. Mosi lager and Chibuku 'shake-shake' sorghum beer are the drinks.

Zambian music runs from kalindula, a rumba-influenced style, to the 1970s 'Zamrock' psychedelic bands such as WITCH, now reissued worldwide, and today's Zambian hip hop.