Feature Column

By Dr Charles Ngoma ‘Allow the little children to come to Me, do not hinder them, for to such like these, belongs the Kingdom of...

Maybe this Groupthink believes Zambians have “selective amnesia” to forget so soon years of impunity the same clique perpetuated with passion and callous arrogance against Zambians. And their regrouping is happening at a time when this country is recording unprecedented national development.It is now amusing that the same without apology for their sins are reconstituting themselves into an assembly of revisionism to continue from where Zambians stopped them.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) was enacted by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on 18th May, 2000 as a component of the Trade and Development Act 2000. The Act seeks to enhance trade and investment between the United States and Africa by providing for one way trade preferences to products originating from eligible AGOA countries. AGOA builds on the existing Generalized System of Preferences program to allow eligible AGOA countries to export over 6,000 eligible products to the United States of America duty-free, with a special focus on value-added and non-traditional products.

In the year 1996, the government reclassified the tourism sector from a social to an economic category. This was a recognition of the sector’s potential to contribute to economic development in terms of, Inter alias, foreign exchange earnings, employment and income generation, contribution to government revenues, promotion of rural development and as well as perform the role of sustainable development catalyst (Tourism Policy for Zambia,1999). Fifteen years down the road, we are still singing about the countries’ tourism potential.

Africa is bidding to host the world's most powerful radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). When constructed, in 2025, it will have 50 times greater sensitivity than any other radio telescope on Earth. The SKA will probe the edges of our universe, even before the first stars and galaxies that formed after the Big Bang. This telescope will contribute to answering fundamental questions in astronomy, physics and cosmology, including the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

The idea for this article has been stewing in my mind for some time. After being in Kasanka for 7 months I have heard...

As the people’s revolutions sweep across the Middle East from Morocco to Bahrain, a number of analysts including the author have started wondering about the new political and economic order of that region, after the dust has settled down. For further discussion, the Middle Eastern region undergoing the turbulences can be divided into two parts: the Maghreb region comprising of countries of North Africa like Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and these are countries in the proximity to the European Union. The second part comprises of countries in the Arabian Peninsula like Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Yemen and the Gulf States including the Emirates, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait. Quite surprisingly Iran and Iraq are out of these revolts as those countries have specific problems of their own.

But, no one points out that in 1964, there was no University, fewer primary and secondary schools and hospitals. Schools and hospitals were segregated to ‘whites’ and blacks. After independence the whites were joined by the uppity blacks who could afford to pay, or the ‘senior staff’ in the mine townships. Only Church run institutions provided decent education facilities for the poor. Many Government primary schools were grass-thatch roofed buildings with holes in the walls for windows and pit latrines even beyond 1969! The main thoroughfares from Lusaka to Chipata and Mongu and from Kapiri Mposhi to Kasama were gravel roads. It was ‘hell run’ in the rainy season to drive from Lusaka to Kasama! Crossing the more southern parts of the Muchinga escarpment near Luangwa river en-route to Chipata from the capital was an exercise in sphincter control!