News — zambia

A Zambian college student lost his life after Chinese nationals beat him because he was dating a Chinese woman. While beating him, the Chinese men exclaimed that they would not allow black beings to be raised in their country. No legal action was taken against these men for murder. As this happens in China, over a million Chinese live in the African continent. The Chinese in African seem to get away with a lot, even racist acts. This is a "China problem" that needs to be addressed. It's time to stands up against such racist actions against lack people.

China's presence is visible all over Africa. Zambia stands out as the country where China invested the most money in 2020. Currently, China possesses one-third of Zambia's national debt. It has invested in the mining and industrial sectors, but also in agriculture. Though some say this is a mutually beneficial relationship, the impact of Chinese presence in Zambia and the rest of Africa is quite controversial. Some Zambians denounce this Chinese presence as a form of neo-colonialism. What do you think about China's investment and presence in Africa?

A Chinese man who a video showed was being pulled on a trolley by a Zambian in the East African country may be deported if investigations find him “wanting”, authorities say.

A permanent secretary in Zambia’s Ministry of Labor, Chanda Kaziya, told the BBC that government will investigate what was captured on video as well as the issues surrounding the Zambian man pulling his Chinese boss. The video went viral via social media platforms and was condemned by many as “racist”.

The video shows a Chinese man closing what seems to be a storehouse. He then stepped onto the trolley that was pulled by the Zambian now identified as John Zulu. But no farther than a few yards of being pulled by the Zambian, the Chinese man was accosted by two other Zambian men who asked why he was being chauffered.

“You cannot walk? You don’t do this!,” the men can be heard asking the Chinese man several times. They then asked their compatriot to stop giving the ride and walked briskly with Zulu and his boss away from where they had met them.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city, Miles Sampa, announced via a Facebook post that Zulu had been contracted to a new job by the landlord of the Chinese expatriate.

Sampa’s post read: “The good news on carousel saga is that the landlord of the Mall Lamasat Ltd have [sic] offered John Zulu a job with their main premises management [sic] office. He further indicated to possibly terminate the tenancy agreement with the tenant that exhibited racial abuse towards his black employee by getting pulled on a trolley for over six hour [sic].”

China’s interests in Africa over the last decade have translated into many more Chinese people in African countries now more than ever before. Many of them are business owners who do everything from manufacturing to retailing. However, citizens of dozens of African countries have reported abuse from Chinese bosses as well as culture clashes.

Zambia has formally requested a financing arrangement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with its debt crisis, the Fund said in a statement on Tuesday. The IMF is “currently assessing this request,” it said.

The administration of President Edgar Lungu released a photo showing him in a meeting with officials of the IMF in the capital, Lusaka. According to Reuters, Zambia officials have been tight-lipped on what was discussed at the meeting.

The request for assistance from the IMF follows a rocky relationship between the Fund and the Zambia government. However, Reuters cited the country’s finance minister, Bwalya Ng’andu, as saying that the government had been in talks with the Bretton Wood institution over an “appropriate policy instrument” to help manage its debt.

The copper-producing nation became the first African country to default on its loan repayment, totaling $3 billion, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Zambia issued three sovereign debt instruments before COVID-19; the first being a $750 million debt instrument with a 5.375% interest, the second being a $1 billion debt instrument with 8.5%, and the third being 1.25 billion with 8.9% interest.

The suspension of the loan repayment covered three upcoming interest payments on debts due on October 14 this year, January 30 and March 20 next year. The country says its inability to honor its debt commitment is because of challenging macroeconomic and fiscal situations “aggravated by the COVID-19 crisis that has severely affected the country’s public finances.”

The Finance Ministry added that a combination of declining revenues and increased unbudgeted costs caused by the COVID-19 has affected its available resources to make timely payments on its indebtedness leading to increasing debt-servicing difficulties.

Zambia, Africa’s second-largest producer of copper, has accumulated foreign debt of $10 billion over the past decade. The drastic fall in copper price has strained the country’s finances and stalled economic growth, which grew at an average of 6.8% between 2000 and 2014. The country’s public debt reached 80 percent of GDP in 2019 from 35 percent at the end of 2014.

The South African country is not the only nation taking steps to default on loan payments. Argentina reached an agreement with its creditors to restructure $65 billion of its foreign debt.

Ever since the outbreak of COVID-19 and the imposition of restrictions on movement, African Finance Ministers have called for the suspension of debt interest payments so as to free fiscal space for critical investment in health to contain the spread of the virus.

Some African Heads of State have even called for the complete forgiveness of all bilateral and multilateral debt.

According to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, calls for debt relief are complicated by Africa’s range of creditors. Of all Africa’s external interest payments, 55% are made to private creditors while only 17% are made to multilateral institutions, with the same figure going to China.

Mo Ibrahim Foundation further noted that before COVID-19, as many as 30 African countries spent more on repaying public debt than on healthcare. The Gambia, for example, spends as much as nine times its health budget on debt servicing, while Angola and Congo spend six times. 

Nigeria, damaged by the collapse in oil prices, has secured a $3.4 billion loan from the IMF, having resisted borrowing from the organization for years. It has also requested a further $3.5 billion from the World Bank. 

Egypt, hurt by a lack of tourism revenue and decreased trading through the Suez Canal, has received $2.8 billion from the IMF and is seeking a further $5 billion to account for the coronavirus-induced budget shortfall.

The lack of transparency in a deal reached between Zambia’s debt-laden government and the China Development Bank (CDB) is making Zambia’s debt crisis worse, says the head of a China-Africa think-tank.

Zambia reached a deal with the CDB, the biggest of three state-owned policy banks, to defer debt repayments on a loan that were due this month, Zambia’s government announced on Thursday.

Under the deal interest payments were postponed for six months until the 25th April 2021, the secretary to the Treasury Fredson Yamba said in the statement.

The deal shows rare flexibility on behalf of a Chinese lender, but the secretive nature of negotiations – with the size of the loan and the amount of the debt repayments due remaining undisclosed – is adding to Zambia’s problems by blocking the country’s access to international capital says Eric Olander, co-founder and managing editor of the China Africa Project. 

“The lack of transparency related to China’s negotiations with borrowers, an accurate accounting of the true amount of Chinese debt and the terms of those loans, sends a signal to the market that directly contributes to the exceptionally high risk premium that African sovereigns encounter when they need to borrow money.

 “Without access to capital, the liquidity crisis in Africa worsens, contributing to inflation that pushes up prices and eats away at what’s left of consumers’ disposable income.”

Like the G20’s six-month extension of its Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) for the world’s poorest countries, the CDB’s deal with Zambia doesn’t go far enough, Olander says.

“The CDB’s deal with Zambia is nothing more than the bare minimum. We’re talking about a single loan where the Chinese creditor is still going to get repaid in full, just a few months later than what was expected. That’s not exactly momentous.”

Zambia owed CBD around $311m in June 2019, according to the latest Zambian finance ministry figures.

The Zambian government missed a $42.5m coupon payment on one of its Eurobonds that was due on October 14 but has a 30-day grace period before it goes into default.

The deal is also unlikely to pressure Zambia’s bondholders to take a haircut and accept similar terms on their returns, Olander says.

“The bondholders want the Chinese to be far more assertive in terms of laying out the details of their loan portfolio in Zambia so they can better assess the risk. This CDB deal does not do that.

Meanwhile as the Chinese government continues discussions with other debt-ridden countries, debt deferrals are likely to be on the agenda in Kenya, Ethiopia and Dijbouti, he adds.

S&P Global Ratings Services downgraded its assessment of Zambia’s debt to “selective default” after the southern African nation couldn’t meet repayments and missed a coupon payment on its Eurobonds.

Zambia’s Zesco Limited says it intends to save about 12 megawatts of electricity through the installation of energy-saving bulbs.

The power utility, on Monday, through its spokesman, Henry Kapata, said the power utility has embarked on the replacement of incandescent bulbs with Light Emitting Diodes (LED) tubes and fluorescent tubes with LED tubes as part of energy-saving measures.

“These alternative energy bulbs are long-term that will help us meet the demand for electricity and the ever-increasing customer base,” he said in press release.

Kapata said power utility had since embarked on the distribution of the bulbs in some residential areas in Lusaka, the country’s capital, which is expected to be completed before the end of the year.

According to him, the power utility expects to install 147,456 LED bulbs with a lifespan of about 30,000 hours, suggesting savings of about 12 megawatts.

Power utility has procured 30,000 energy-saving bulbs and installed them in all its buildings.

Kapata added that power utility has also embarked on promoting the bulbs in industrial, commercial and public buildings to scale up energy efficiency.