{"id":1463,"date":"2015-05-27T11:41:25","date_gmt":"2015-05-27T16:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=1463"},"modified":"2025-01-10T16:48:33","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T22:48:33","slug":"lusaka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2015\/05\/27\/lusaka\/","title":{"rendered":"Lusaka"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re back to work\u2026.<\/p>\n

How many of you thought of taking a vacation in Lusaka, Zambia?<\/p>\n

I thought so.\u00a0 If you did, I would have been surprised, because this city of\u00a0 4 million inhabitants \u2014about 7 hours and 250 miles by bus from Victoria Falls, is better recognized (about a third of the population\u2014and they were on the street to greet us in their cars at 1:30 when we arrived\u2014or so it seemed) as the business and political capital of Zambia.\u00a0 That\u2019s why we\u2019re here\u2014to resume our quest for knowledge about doing business in sub-Sahara Africa.<\/p>\n

The British moved the political center here from Livingstone in 1935 to be close to the copper mines.\u00a0 I should point out that there are some safaris nearby, and camping as well (it\u2019s a big country relatively sparsely settled); the economic officer of the embassy, who helped arrange many of our visits, noted he prefers this station to his previous posts\u2014Beijing, Hanoi, and Cape Town\u2014partly because of the less frenetic pace here.\u00a0 He regaled our table at lunch with his camping experiences\u2014from having the attendants at the park (they are basically water bearers) cut a ten foot branch, bring it down, and slay the poisonous snake on it.\u00a0 The snake is both aggressive and territorial, and deadly, bad combinations of traits; or the time a pride of 9 lionesses dropped in one day.\u00a0 And we think raccoons are annoying!<\/p>\n

Anyway, you can probably tell why you might not want to come to Lusaka, unless you want to do business in this country.\u00a0 Today\u2019s headline screamed \u201cZambia\u2019s economy thriving\u2014experts,\u201d and while we\u2019re not quoted in the article, from what we\u2019ve seen and heard, there\u2019s reason for the optimism.\u00a0 Some of the optimism comes from the relative political stability, and stabilizing of the local currency (which depreciated about 15% last year); part comes from the natural resources\u2014copper is king here, and we\u2019ll be visiting a company tomorrow; part from the agricultural potential.\u00a0 It has the highest percentage of undeveloped arable land on the continent, and 40% of the available surface water in the region.\u00a0 Hence the potential for hydroelectric power to replace the non-sustainable charcoal, which accounts for 80% of the heating\/cooking\/pollution\/deforestation.<\/p>\n

The embassy staff hosted us last night, and noted some of the other economic problems, especially the fact that this is a landlocked country that does not have easy access to the sea.\u00a0 The roads are ok, but the overall rating of logistics is 178th<\/sup> out of 181 countries, with containers costing about six times more than in the United States.\u00a0 The Chinese helped build a railroad to Mozambique, but it apparently collapsed during the rainy season.<\/p>\n

We might have peered into the future last night, because after the embassy briefing, the embassy and FDIB hosted a session with the American Chamber of Commerce.\u00a0 The cards I collected included someone from the department of Tourism, a Lebanese print shop owner who\u2019d been here for 16 years, a Dane and a Norwegian working on advanced degrees and interning with the Standard Bank, and the Executive Director of the Chamber, a 30 year old graduate of the University of Dayton who saw the job advertised, and came out; he told me if I had students who want to intern to be sure to contact him.<\/p>\n

The highlight was the Minister of Commerce, an exceptionally articulate woman who had been managing director of one of the banks.\u00a0 I thought: \u201cThis woman should be president.\u201d When I shared that thought with one of the chamber members, he replied: \u201cThat\u2019s why she was put in the cabinet.\u00a0 They want to fast track her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s visits included a $300 million agribusiness company, whose goal is to \u201cfeed the nation\u201d (and eventually the continent).\u00a0 We went to \"\"<\/a> their dairy farm, which is a small part of the business, but with two of our faculty from Wisconsin, and the importance of agriculture, a nice visit for us.\u00a0 We donned white coats, hairnets, and galoshes to go to the dairy, a feedlot, with a look at some of their consumer products (they make a yummy hazelnut yoghurt), and a discussion of free range and non gmo meat.\u00a0 Stock feed, beef, edible oils, and crops account for about 15% of the income each.\u00a0 The company lost money last year because of exchange rates and the decline of the local currency.\u00a0 It started 25 years ago and now has a major partnership with Shoprite.\u00a0 The agricultural outlook here prompted Cargill to purchase a $30 million operation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The other visit was to a Chinese Special Economic Zone.\u00a0 In 2006, Hu Jintao said China would open 3 in Africa, and the one here is just getting off the ground.\u00a0 We went into an exhibition hall which hosts Chinese who want to sell and Zambians who want to sell or buy, too.\u00a0 The red banner celebrating \u201cMotherland in heart, mobilize our love for Africa to win hand-in-hand,\u201d reminded me of similar slogans in China to stimulate production and pride.\u00a0 By the end of last year the Chinese claimed to have spent $151 million on infrastructure improvements (it\u2019s near the airport) and attracted $1.2 billion in Chinese investment, primarily from Northeast China\u2019s Jilin province (Changchun is the capital city, and the managing director beamed when I told him, in Chinese, of course, that I had been there). While most of the businesses are in nonferrous metals industry, we toured a mushroom-growing (indoor) farm.\u00a0 We got quite an education on mushrooms (including the numerous health benefits; I think I heard the same type of talk visiting tea farms in Fujian years ago), and the many varieties, including the \u201coak mushroom,\u201d more commonly known in the West as \u201cshitake\u201d (the manager didn\u2019t seem happy that the Japanese had rebranded it successfully); and several varieties of oyster including a golden one, named for the scientist who took the wild variety and domesticated it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One room provided a real education; Zambians were in it using a knife to pare down the large mushrooms for sale.\u00a0 While the company at\u00a0 this point is still selling only locally, I had visions of something I had said half in jest when my international business class discussed the rising cost of Chinese wages\u2014\u201cThere\u2019s always Africa.\u201d\u00a0 The special economic zone claims to have created 8,000 jobs.<\/p>\n

We saw a number of Chinese language hotels and restaurants in the city, which indicates to me the presence of a substantial Chinese population of traders and businessmen.\u00a0 I shouldn\u2019t complain, though. We\u2019re staying at a Taj Hotel (probably because of the Indian traders and businessmen), and as a result, I had freshly-cooked dosa, paneer, and sambal for breakfast.\u00a0 It was a very welcome change (to me) from American and British breakfasts that have been standard fare for the last three weeks since I left the US.<\/p>\n

Bon appetit!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re back to work\u2026. How many of you thought of taking a vacation in Lusaka, Zambia? I thought so.\u00a0 If you did, I would have been surprised, because this city of\u00a0 4 million inhabitants \u2014about 7 hours and 250 miles by bus from Victoria Falls, is better recognized (about a third of the population\u2014and they … Continue reading “Lusaka”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-south-africa-may-2015"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7310,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions\/7310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}