By Trevor Simumba

During the ground-breaking ceremony for the Lusaka-Kapiri-Ndola Dual Carriageway project, the Chinese Ambassador to Zambia stated an old Chinese proverb that goes, “build your roads first if you want to get rich”.

Transportation infrastructure is crucial to the economic and social development of a nation.

Zambia has many favourable natural endowments for its development, however, subject to poor infrastructure, a fair amount of its economic potential cannot be fully tapped.

The project of the Lusaka-Ndola Dual Carriageway was mooted over four years ago as part of the Link Zambia 8000 project and the process of selecting a PPP contractor started in 2015.

In 2015 a Restricted Invitation to Tender was issued by the RDA (Ref: RDA/PPP/CE/001/15). The RFP stated that the RDA, intended to enter into a Public-Private Partnership Agreement in form of a concession to undertake the upgrading of the Lusaka to Ndola road to dual carriageway.

This Request for Proposals (RFP) solicited for financially and technically competent prospective concessionaires to Finance, Design, Construct, Operate, Maintain and Toll the proposed road projects. Below are the original specifications:

1. Lusaka to Ndola (T002/T003) approximately 321 km, including Kafulafuta to Luanshya Town (M006), approximately 45 km;

2. Construction of new carriageway lane road, 6.8m wide with 2.0m wide shoulders, with Grade Separation where required;

3. Median separation (9.2m in rural areas and 2m in urban areas);

4. Service lanes on either side of the road in urban areas with pedestrian traffic accommodation facilities including walkways, cycle tracks, walk-over bridges, etc;

5. 50mm Asphalt Concrete on 200mm crushed stone base and 300mm cement stabilised sub-base or alternative subject to approval by the Client;

6. Construction of two bypasses around Kapiri Mposhi and Kabwe central business districts;

7. Major drainage works – construction of bridges and culverts;

8. Rehabilitation/reconstruction in selected sections of the existing road, with 2.0m wide shoulders;

9. Construction of Toll Plazas at designated toll sites; and

The Bidder was to propose the construction and concession periods, which shall be subject to negotiation. As can be noted from the above this was purely a road upgrading project without all the other added commercial provisions that the Minister highlighted to justify the new high cost of the project.

All the bridges and by-pass roads were already factored into the project costs.

According to the RDA RFP the Economic Internal Rate of Return (EIRR) this road was approximately 29 per cent and the cost of construction was estimated at K930 million.

However, the Minister of Infrastructure and Housing in his Ministerial Statement to Parliament stated that the total contract sum is US$1,245,775,986 (approx. K11.1 billion) which is a huge jump from the original estimated K930 million).

More importantly he stated that EIRR was now 15% and that the contract had been varied and that it was no longer strictly a PPP as the contractor had obtained a loan for the project.

The Minister further stated that the selected financial model has a payback period of seventeen years, with an internal rate of return of 15 per cent. This rate of return is 50% lower than the original one even though the Minister stated that this was a very good rate of return!

The project under the selected model further shows that the project will generate gross revenues of approximately US$3.5 billion over a period of seventeen years after commencement of operations.

Even with the assurances from the Minister public perception of high level corruption in this project persists.

Initially during the Groundbreaking ceremony, it was stated that the Government had obtained a loan of 1.2 billion dollars from China Exim Bank.

This has been confirmed in the RDA 2018 Approved Road Sector Annual Work Plan (RSAWP) that shows a disbursement of K1.4 billion ($147 million = $1.7 million per km of works) for 86 km worth of works for the period covering 2018 and indicates the source of funds as China Exim Bank.

More significantly, the Government of Zambia has provided a sovereign guarantee for these funds which means if something goes wrong the Zambian public will have to pay this debt.

The Minister of Finance in his 2018 budget address stated: “Mr. Speaker, the recently launched Lusaka – Ndola dual carriage way is one of the most critical economic roads. Let me hasten to mention that this project consists of two phases. Phase I will be the construction of the dual carriage way, while phase II will involve the construction of auxiliary infrastructure which includes hotels, toll gates and service stations. Phase I will be financed through Public Private Initiatives while phase II will be financed through private sector participation.”

The question that lingers is why Government is taking all the risk even for the private sector commercial projects on this road and if the internal rate of return is so good why is the Chinese contractor is not able to finance the project without recourse to sovereign guarantees.

America Finally Develops a Magical Laser Gun for Drones With Similar Potency And Accuracy to the Kaliloze Night Gun of the Barotseland

Three year ago, I did post on my Facebook Page this write-up. Surprising, it attracted very little attention.

One year on, Professor Nkandu Luo hinted on the need to undertake research into witchcraft. Public reaction was quite negative.

Now, a degree programme has been introduced at UNZA. Public reaction is even worse.

This story I posted, and I re-post, is about Barrie Reynolds, Keeper of Ethography of the Livingstone Museum, now called and the National Museum of Zambia. Sixty years ago, Barrie wrote a small three page article for NADA, the in-house journal of the Southern Rhodesia Native Affairs Department. The story was about a young British police officer investigating a murder and near beheading in the Barotseland Protectorate (present-day Western Province, Zambia). Two women had been murdered with a suspicion of witchcraft attached. The weapon used was a “Kaliloze Night Gun”.

Barrie Reynolds, who had been invited to interview the accused, and to examine the confiscated material used in evidence in the court cases, noted that “a change had recently taken place in the manner in which these weapons were being constructed. These kaliloze guns were fired at the sun, or through a hole in a wall. No physical wound was inflicted. However, death was caused. What caused the death remained a mystery.

In the ensuing government clamp down, an astounding number of people were formally charged and convicted of contravening the witchcraft legislation. No less than nine young men were arrested, sentenced to death, and executed.

Fast forward to 2014, a Laser Weapon System (LaWS) was launched by the U.S. It has similar potency, stunning accuracy, secrecy and the mystery of the “The Kaliloze Night Gun” of Barotseland. But because has been developed by the Americans, no one has been arrested, charged and executed .

The weapon is now mounted on the USS Ponce, an amphibious US transport ship, which has been deployed in the Persian Gulf.
According to news sources last year, the LaWS is “world’s first laser weapon” — one that can “kill” threatening, airborne drones — and is ready for action.

The question is: is LaWS really the world’s first laser weapon?

As indicated above, sixty years ago, the Baroste “laser scientists” had similar weapons, except for want of comprehension of photon and laser science at the time, and such “scientists” were labeled “witches and wizards” and executed.

The new laser weapon, may seem as though it were pulled straight from a James Bond movie, but it is entirely functional, and can shoot with stunning accuracy, according to the U.S. Navy.

“Operationally, it works just like a laser pointer,” Lt. Cale Hughes, a LaWS officer, told CNN. “There’s a chamber inside with special materials that release photons.”

The LaWS laser beam is completely silent and invisible. It’s also fast: The laser travels at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second, or about 300,000 kilometers per second), meaning it’s about 50,000 times the speed of an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile, such as the one North Korea was testing last year, the Navy told CNN.

The $40 million system requires a team of three to operate it and a small generator to power its electricity supply, according to the Navy.

However, each blast is relatively cheap. “It’s about a dollar a shot,” Hughes told CNN.

In addition to being able to take down threats in the air, the LaWS can hit and disable objects in water. The laser’s accurate blasts, heated to thousands of degrees, might even mean fewer casualties in combat, Inez Kelly, a U.S. Naval Forces Central Command science adviser, told CNN.

For instance, if the laser is aimed at an enemy boat, operatives can “take out exactly the engine, and not necessarily damage anything else,” Kelly said.

“That type of precision weapon work is something that you don’t really get with conventional weapons, because there tends to be more collateral damage.”
Under Geneva Convention rules, armed forces are not allowed to use laser weapons directly against people.

The U.S. has pledged to abide by that protocol, Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research, said in 2014 at a news conference in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Navy is already developing second-generation systems that might be able to target threats other than drones and water vessels. These missions are classified, but when asked whether the LaWS could shoot and destroy missiles, USS Ponce Capt. Christopher Wells said “maybe” and smiled, according to CNN.

Back to Zambia, first reported in 1906, Kaliloze guns have been “classified” guns used to rid society in western Zambia of witches for much of the 20th Century, and probably for a lot longer before the 1900s. Not surprisingly these magical guns, which are preferably made out of the thigh bones of human beings, attracted the horrified attention of British colonial administrators, and continue to fascinate and frighten people in Zambia in the present.

In the course of the 20th Century the Kaliloze, as a magical weapon, has changed and spread eastwards within Zambia. From the 1970s on wards, the Kaliloze has to a large extent become synonymous with the AK 47 assault rifle when it is used as a Karavina. It appears the science is slowly but suely going into extinct.

One thing for sure, we needed to undertake a serious research to understand and harness the potency and accuracy of this “classified” science using modern science.

You like it or not, the Barotse people were light years ahead of the Americans in terms of laser and photon science. The British imperialists are largely to blame for executing the natives for practicing a science that was way beyond their comprehension.

Perhaps, it is high time we rethink our attitude towards African “classified” science, in particular the science of the Kaliloze Guns, the Magical Firearms used in Western Zambia in the 1950s. I totally support the decision to venture into this science from an academic perspective. This could turn out to be another money spinner for Zambia. Just come to think of Zambia exporting 10,000 “Kaliloze Laser Guns” more potent that the LaWS to the rest of the world each worth than $50 million.

We need to start thinking in that direction…..I mean “Think-Outside-the-Box”.