President Edgar Chagwa Lungu yesterday morning began a busy schedule of his engagements in China with a meeting 15 companies and investors expressing interest in a wide range of investment destinations ranging from biotechnology, railway construction, hydropower, road construction, housing – infrastructure in general and other priority areas where Zambia wants to invest and develop.
In addressing the investors whom he met in intervals, President Lungu spoke highly of Zambia as an investment destination with plenty of land, water, natural resources, a friendly people, erable land, rule of law, a business enabling environment and its supporting government policies.
He called for a win- win approach to any form of investment and business explaining that it was critical for skills transfer and development to be at the centre of any form of investment venture in Zambia.
“You are welcome to our beautiful country. We want to work with you. Zambia has plenty of land, and water and natural resources; identify your area of interest and we will support you. And that is why we are here. Back home, you have the opportunity to take advantage of the available local personnel, skills and expertise. Our people are friendly and they will welcome any investment which allows them to keep and maintain all those jobs we are skilled in,” he has emphasised.
It is worth noting from the engagements that there is huge appetite and a lot of interest from the investment community with some of them expressly indicating that as soon as next week, after meeting the President, they will begin to make contact with the relevant agencies that deal with investment promotion and anything incidental to that.
And at 4pm Chinese time, the Republican President met with his Chinese counterpart, His Excellency President Xi Jinping for a bilateral summit between the Two Heads of State.
President Lungu will today, Sunday, deliver a keynote speech at the Zambia- China business and investment forum organised and hosted by the China Nonferrous Metal Mining (Group) Company -CNMC- who are the owners of Chambishi mine and other investments in Zambia.
Why is it that Lungu rarely has a confident posture???? Skills transfer is a pipe dream so long u continue engaging the Chinese in the manner we have been doing. Besides why bring this up now when we are over our neck in Chinese debt???
What skills have the Chinese people who are in zambia right now brought? Selling Vitumbuwa, chicken runs, black mountain mining……? It seems the chinese have acquired our skills upon arriving.
Edgar Lungu, product of UnZa like Miles Sampa, Winter Kabimba and many more jokers like these guys.
Skills transfer can only happen if you bring your so-called investors with a training package included. I vividly remember how most parastatals had, as a policy, training schools or solutions. Zambia Railways had a training school, Zambia Airways engaged the Ministry of Finance and also had a flight ops training school, among others. Asking people to do you a favor in transferring skills like you are buying bananas from the market will not do it. Awe shuwa mwandini…
Comment:that’s a sign of gud gesture!
hopefully this trip won’t just be in vain but consequently generate jobs to youths in Zambia!
Like surely does this person called Lungu knows what is doing, my guy you are a president act like one not a pawn on a chess board, when are you going to be fit for your job.
They are already crawling in every crevice in Zambia, even raising chickens for sale at markets. Are these the skills the President is talking about? Or are we being colonised by the Chinese?!?
Skills transfer: nice sounding phrase, sometimes an empty slogan. But the chinese investors also want to create employment for their own nationals as they invest in Zambia. So which is which? We have been on this path since independence, nothing new, now we start all over again?
On the other hand the laziness and indiscipline of some of our workers can be shocking!!!
And some of the things like an “investor” rearing chemically poisonous chickens and selling at our markets surely are entirely within our control to stop or not to permit, do we have to negotiate wirh the chinese?
Really laughable…he is singing the same song everyday the lazy dingbat; he can not enforce the 20% work towards local contractors and he is busy talking about nonsense. No wonder they are laughing at the African foooool!
Non of these investments mentioned in this article aims at adding value to our natural resources, and we still believe we can end poverty? Just singing that there is a lot of land so that he can offload more land to the Chinese!! Why not challenge them to come and start manufacturing copper,cobalt and agric based products to export to China and rest of the world?? Construction creates temporary jobs and requires huge investment which by our current approach has created us alot of debt, we need to start manufacturing for us to industrialize! For that we need to make use of the IDC and ZDA to ensure we move away from exports of raw materials, while the Chinese can contribute to that,they are not an entire solution!!
HE IS TALL….HE TENDERS TO LOWER HIMSELF AMONG SHORT PEOPLE….THEY SHOULD USE TECHNOLOGY TO REMIND HIM OF THAT…..
MEANT TENDS…..