By Sean Tembo – PeP President

1. It is important for a Republican President to undertake trips to foreign countries provided such trips are substantially beneficial to Zambia. Kindly note my use of the term “substantially beneficial” as opposed to just beneficial. The question then becomes; when does a presidential foreign trip become substantially beneficial to Zambia? Well, from my standpoint, it is when the benefits of undertaking such a trip outweigh the costs. The costs of a foreign trip include the monetary cost of transportation, accommodation, food, allowances for the entourage, etcetera as well as the opportunity cost of traveling abroad instead of attending to domestic matters.

2. The benefits of a presidential foreign trip in my view include the tangible and the intangible. Tangible benefits are those which can be seen and measured, whereas intangible benefits are those that cannot be seen or measured, and whose existence is a matter of conjecture. Examples of tangible benefits include bilateral trade agreement with other countries whereby say Angola agrees to import all its chicken requirements from Zambia instead of Brazil or America which may translate to say 20 million metric tonnes over the next 10 years, and in return we agree to purchase all our crude oil requirements from Angola, for processing by Indeni. That is a mutually beneficial bilateral trade agreement that would create jobs in Zambia as well as add to economic growth. Another key tangible benefit of a presidential foreign trip would be attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to Zambia in terms of companies from foreign countries coming to establish operations here and employing our people as well as contributing to the national tax basket. Intangible benefits include networking and creating goodwill between Zambia and other countries.

3. HH has so far undertaken five foreign trips; to the United States, Scotland, South Africa, Botswana and more recently to DRC Congo. All these five trips were to attend summits or conferences. These being the UN general assembly in the US, COP26 climate summit in Scotland, the Inter-Africa Trade Forum in South Africa, the International Children’s Day Commemoration in Botswana and the Africa Business Forum in DRC. Summits are essentially meet-and-greet talk shops which only bring about the intangible benefits of networking and goodwill but hardly bring about tangible benefits such as FDI and bilateral trade agreements (BTA).

4. You see, for a President to attract FDI to Zambia, or for relations between two countries to culminate into a BTA, a lot of one-on-one ground work has to be done. For instance, in the case of FDI, the Zambian mission in say Angola has to identify specific companies that can invest in specific sectors in Zambia and such companies need to be provided with all the information that they need to know about doing business here in terms of Labour laws, economic environment etcetera. Then our relevant Ministers headed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs have to go to and meet the interested foreign companies and answer their questions related to specific sectors. It is only after the foreign companies are happy with the information that they have acquired will they considered coming for a physical visit here to come and see the business environment for themselves. When our President goes to visit such a foreign country, he would visit the premises of companies that are intending to set up shop here, just to get assurance that they are not briefcase investors.

5. Similarly, for bilateral trade agreements, a lot of background work has to be put in at Mission level as well as at the respective ministerial level before a BTA can be drafted for review by each country. Even when a draft BTA is in place, Presidents and their advisors can speak over the phone to iron out particular thorny issues. By the time a President makes a foreign trip to a particular country, they need to just go and put ink to paper, toast some champagne and fly back, because all ground work would have already been done. As President, you cannot just jump on your presidential jet and swing by Malawi or Congo DRC looking for investors or trying to enhance trade relations when you have not done any groundwork.

6. In the case of HH, he has not secured a single bilateral trade agreement in all the five trips that he has undertaken so far. Similarly, he has not attracted a single Ngwee of foreign direct investment despite spending millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money traveling around. That is because his trips are haphazard. They are not coordinated by prior groundwork at Zambian mission level or at ministerial level. Also, he has been focusing too much on summits and conferences as opposed to one-on-one bilateral trips to specific presidents of specific countries. Additionally, HH has got it wrong by believing that he is the Chief Marketing Officer of Zambia. He is not. As President, he is the Board Chairman of Zambia. The Secretary to Cabinet is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Zambia. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is our Chief Marketing Officer. By wrongly believing that he is the Chief Marketing Officer of Zambia, HH is taking over the job of his Foreign Affairs Minister and reducing him to his Aide de Camp. The Minister of ForeignAffairs should be able to embark on various trips in the region and overseas with his own entourage, and not just being in the shadow of the President whenever the President travels abroad.

7. On the other hand, HH should spend sufficient time here at home so that he can obtain a fair understanding of the domestic issues that require to be resolved. Issues to do with reducing the cost of living. Issues to do with hindrances to private sector growth. Issues that make it unattractive for investors to come here. Issues that prevent indigenous Zambians from meaningfully participating in our economy. How the poor and vulnerable can be assisted by the State in a sustainable manner. Those and several other issues require the President’s time and attention. Otherwise HH will be applying effort out there trying to attract investors to Zambia and then will be surprised that despite his manny trips abroad, investors are not coming, not knowing that he did not spend enough time and effort to make the local business environment conducive for investment.

8. My final advise to HH is that he should first spend enough time here at home to understand the structure of our economy and it’s various sectors so that even when he goes out there to the outside world, he will be speaking from a point of knowledge and not a point of ignorance. You cannot claim to be a chief marketing officer when you are new and blank on the job. You do not yet know the intricacies of the agriculture sector, mining sector, manufacturing sector, tourism sector, visual arts, etcetera and yet you want to go out there and speak about these sectors of the economy? You’ll just open your mouth for 5 minutes and your audience will see that you are just waffling. President Donald Trump, despite having been an established businessman in the US, spent about a year at home after becoming President, just understanding what is on the ground, before he ventured on foreign trips. The same with Joe Biden and Cyril Ramaphosa. So please, Mr President sir, you are the Board Chairman of Zambia. Stop knocking on doors around the globe. Let the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is our Chief Marketing Officer do his job. Thank you

By Thabo Kawana

I have noted with gratitude the article on sitting allowances written by my good friend who not too long ago was a civil servant himself and now a politician.

I want to make it clear that what I have written here is my personal views and that the said views herein do not represent the position of the UPND Alliance nor the Government. This is strictly a whatsapp conversation meant for social and not official consumption.

Let me begin by agreeing with him (Mwamba) firstly that, Yes, Sitting Allowances for civil servants, were abolished in 2012. However, other allowances remained such as Subsistence and Out of Pocket among various others. And the President did not call out a specific allowance like sitting allowance but rather mentioned allowances in general meaning, this can relate to but not explicitly sitting allowance only.

So do senior civil servants and officials still receive allowances beyond the ban of allowances such as sitting allowance from 2012?

Yes they do and this is what happens, the organisers of these meetings and workshops who are junior to middle management civil servants whom we shall reffer to as the “tu chawa committee”, would go out of their way to impress the “clique” by ensuring one way or another, they still got Govt money into their pockets even on an ordinary working day.

How? The tu chawa committee would organize meetings and/or workshops involving Government Officials at venues such as Mika Lodge or Sandy’s Creation and then pay allowances of K900 or more depending on your position for the day claiming that Mika Lodge is in Chongwe District whilst Sandy’s Creation is in Chilanga District for example and therefore the Officials are out of their jurisdiction hence allowances being paid to them.

Positions such as that of a PS get over K1200 per day.

President HH simply handed a cure to this mischief, the forth coming workshop for Ministers and Permanent Secretaries will be at Mulungushi International Conference Center within Lsk so no allowances expected to be paid out.

Then I want to also believe that the traveling Provincial Ministers and PSs shall be accommodated and fed hence only attracting an out-of-pocket allowance which is like K240 per day.

This works out cheaper and prudent in utilization of public funds as is envisioned and espoused by His Excellency the President.

Ala mukose ba clique, the days of chewing free money from Govt are over. It’s now time to work for the pipo of Zambia and correctly earning what is truly due to one and not free stealing of public resources.

The days of applying low standards to high office are over!

Bally is fixing this.