IRIN Focus on Western Province

Fertile and resource-rich, Zambia’s Western province is nevertheless among the country’s poorest regions. It’s a land of cattle, fish, and farms, but has suffered over the last decade from the privatisation of agriculture, government neglect, and the anti-investment policies of a royal establishment that still holds tremendous sway. For young men like Ngenda Ngenda, 25, there’s little expectation that things are going to improve any time soon. Since leaving school in 1995, he has had one formal job and that lasted for only two years. “Nowadays there’s no employment. If you go to university you spend millions [of kwacha] but just stay in the village [after graduating],” he told IRIN. Out of three brothers and sisters who have finished their studies, only his eldest brother works. But Ngenda considers himself relatively lucky. Through his father he has access to a vehicle, and although it needs fixing, he plans to put it back on the road and transport fresh fish to Lusaka - 580 km away on a badly pot-holed road - which he can sell for a 200 percent mark up. After the fishing season he wants to try trading maize to the capital for a similar profit margin, and if all goes well, in a few years time he may have saved enough to buy a refrigerated trailer and haul beef to Lusaka. But most people in Mongu, the provincial capital, have far more modest goals. By first light each morning, women are on the road trudging the 18 km roundtrip to buy and sell charcoal to help support their families. Outside the rainy season, when Mongu’s plains turn into one vast lake, fishermen are forced to walk up to six hours a day to a tributary of the Zambezi and back with their catch. There is also a black market economy which includes the sale of marijuana, sometimes brought cheaply from across the border in Angola by adventurous young men to feed a persistent demand among the disaffected youth in Mongu, despite repeated crackdowns by the local drug enforcement authorities. Before the freemarket administration of President Frederick Chiluba took power in 1991, the Western province benefited from the previous era of big government and subsidies under Zambia’s independence leader Kenneth Kaunda. A number of state commodity boards at least provided employment, if not particularly efficient services. However, as part of Chiluba’s economic reforms, they were wound up virtually over night and the Western region as a predominantly rural province with few industries suffered. “Privatisation was too fast, too soon,” Phanuel Chibala, the head of the provincial government’s planning office told IRIN. “The government wanted the private sector to engage, but they weren’t ready for the challenge and failed.” He gave the example of fertiliser sales and the lack of credit mechanisms, with businessmen typically omitting the more remote areas as not worth their while. “I don’t know which costed us more, the subsidies then or the shortages now. Maybe it would have been cheaper to have subsidised the growers rather than the consumers.” The Western Province is home of the Barotseland kingdom, which historically stretched into Namibia’s Caprivi region. Under colonial rule it was a British protectorate, but after independence a constitutional change ended the kingdom’s autonomy. However, the monarchy retains substantial influence in the region. Under the conservative rule of the last king, Lobosi Miko Lewanika, the royal establishment flirted with the idea of secession and discouraged “foreigners” from owning land. In Mongu, the biggest private sector development is a branch of the South African supermarket Shoprite chain opened in 1996. But even that is sited on the edge of the town next to an abattoir on rented land, forced there because of an inability to own property in the town centre. “We have a dual system of government and the royal establishment is another level of bureaucracy,” Chibala said. “Businessmen are caught in the middle and in most cases don’t stay. The message has to come from the royal establishment that we want investment to come.” He added that dialogue, rather than confrontation, between the central government and the monarchy “would be a very powerful force to foster development”. Good roads would also help. The single lane highway to Lusaka is in desperate need of maintenance as are most of the roads in the province. In addition there is concern that there must be decisive action to halt the spread of cattle pneumonia, locally blamed on the diseased livestock owned by Angolan refugees, that further threatens the local economy. With little capital in Mongu, and investors leery of investing in the province, its potential remains unrealised. Under a previous state enterprise, one million cashew nut trees were planted in the region. Now, because of a lack of finance to develop the market, farmers are cutting them down for firewood. “The future is very bleak because the largest employer in the province apart from agriculture was the government. But now because the government is restructuring, employment levels have dwindled. The private sector is not strong enough. If you’re coming out of school today there’s almost nothing for you, unless the private sector comes in and grows a little and uses the natural resources here,” Chibala said. However, a new more progressive king, Ilute Yeta III, was crowned earlier this year and there is some hope that he could use his authority to help bring development to the province. “One of the key factors is land. If there is a change in land policy (to allow “foreigners” to own it) we’ll make headway - there’s plenty of land lying idle,” said Killion Phiri, the representative in Mongu of the development NGO World Vision.