Copper’s Double Edge: Zambia’s Sovereignty and Its Dependencies

By Andrew Field

Zambia is once again being carried forward on the familiar promise that copper will lead the way in funding development. It’s a resource that will anchor sovereignty in a changing global economy and position Zambia geopolitically. The language is confident, and this time it is being carried by identifiable hands. President Hakainde Hichilema has positioned himself as the steward of a reset, presenting Zambia as open, disciplined, and ready to re-enter serious economic conversation. It is a deliberate, calculated posture. The world has returned to copper with urgency, and Hichilema is intent on ensuring that Zambia is not left at the margins of that return.

Yet the tone of inevitability deserves scrutiny. Zambia has lived through copper cycles before, and each time the story has begun with promise and ended in qualification. At independence, copper revenues underpinned a sense of national confidence, even as the economy remained dangerously narrow. When prices fell in the 1970s and 1980s, that confidence gave way to contraction and debt. State control followed, then inevitable decline. Privatisation in the 1990s brought investment back, but not without cost, and left the country once again reliant on external capital to sustain production. The pattern is not difficult to trace. Copper has repeatedly offered Zambia opportunity, and just as often exposed its structural vulnerability.

This new round feels different, or at least it is presented as such. The government has set a bold target to reach 3 million tonnes of annual copper production by 2031. Paul Kabuswe has been among the most vocal advocates of this ambition, actively courting investors and projecting confidence that Zambia can scale rapidly. The figure is striking, not only for its scale but for what it implies. Expansion on that level cannot be achieved incrementally. It requires partners and foreign capital; intensive infrastructure development; and operational capacity on a scale that Zambia does not presently command on its own.  It also necessitates technology that is not locally held. In short, it needs a deepening of the very dependencies that the language of sovereignty seeks to diminish.

That tension sits at the heart of the current moment. Zambia is attempting to manage it by diversifying its relationships rather than escaping them. The long shadow of Chinese investment across the Copperbelt remains, shaped by years of financing, construction, and operational involvement. Zambia’s debt exposure is significant in consequence. Chinese firms have embedded themselves in the sector through both capital and execution. Now there is a visible effort, led politically by Hichilema and supported administratively by figures such as Situmbeko Musokotwane, to widen the field. American and European interests are being actively courted. New projects are being positioned within a broader strategic framework that links minerals to infrastructure and infrastructure to geopolitical alignment.  The United States involvement with the Lobito line to the West Coast and forays into the Congo show they are willing to be courted.

That intent is easily misunderstood, though, if it is framed as a simple shift from one partner to another. It is not a clean break, but rather a recalibration. However, Western capital arrives with its own expectations, its own strategic needs, and its own timelines. Their interests, like the Chinese, are driven by copper first, and by Zambia second. There is no moral hierarchy here. Zambia is not choosing between extraction and independence. It is choosing between forms of engagement within a global structure that remains fundamentally extractive, even as the rhetoric around it evolves.

The question of value addition raises its head and sits uneasily within this landscape. It is an attractive idea, and one that carries genuine potential. Copper offers a far more realistic base for downstream industry than many other minerals in the region. The progression from ore to refined metal, and from refined metal to wire, cable, and industrial components, is well established. The demand is clear; even the regional need is substantial. Yet the conditions required to sustain that transition remain demanding. Policy consistency, stable power supply and skilled labour are not optional, they are dependencies. They are the foundation upon which industrialisation either stands or fails and certainly not abstract requirements.  Is Zambia up for it?

There is a risk here, of course, because value addition can become a phrase that travels faster than the capacity to deliver it. Raw export restrictions can be announced with confidence, like the Zimbabweans just did with Lithium, but factories do not appear in response to policy alone. Investors calculate risk over time, not in reaction to statements. Zambia has the advantage of an existing mining ecosystem, which gives it a more credible starting point than many of its neighbours. But credibility is not completion. The move from extraction to manufacturing is not a declaration. It is a discipline.

The environmental dimension complicates the narrative further. Copper is central to the global transition toward cleaner energy systems. Yet the process of extraction continues to carry local consequences that are less often acknowledged in the language of transition. Contamination incidents, degraded waterways, and long-standing pollution legacies across mining regions remain part of the lived reality, as Zambians have just discovered with Chinese firms contamination of the Kafue. Zambia finds itself contributing to a cleaner global future while bearing a disproportionate share of the environmental cost. It is a contradiction that sits quietly beneath the investment narrative.

Politically, Zambia presents a more stable face than it has in recent years, and that stability is closely associated with Hichilema’s administration. Debt restructuring has progressed. Engagement with international financial institutions has resumed. Investor confidence has improved. These are not trivial achievements. They reflect a deliberate effort by Hichilema and Musokotwane to reframe Zambia as fiscally disciplined and economically legible.

Yet the picture is not without strain beneath that surface. The next phase of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, including the more difficult discussions on taxation and public spending, is expected to fall after the August elections rather than before them. That timing is not accidental. It reflects a political calculation as much as an economic one. Growth forecasts have softened, and fiscal pressures are beginning to re-emerge even as the broader recovery narrative holds. Stability, in this sense, is being managed. It is not effortless.

Recent constitutional changes add another layer of unease. The expansion of parliamentary representation and an increase in presidential appointments may be defended in administrative terms, yet their proximity to an election cycle invites scrutiny. It is not a rupture, but a signal. Even administrations that present themselves as reformist are not immune to the gravitational pull of political advantage. The contrast between clean economic messaging and more ambiguous political manoeuvre is difficult to ignore.

For investors, memory matters, and it is here that the legacy of Edgar Lungu still lingers badly. The long-running dispute over Konkola Copper Mines, involving Indian billionaire, Anil Agarwal and his Vedanta Resources company, stands as a reminder of how quickly relations between state and investor can deteriorate. Under Lungu, the asset was seized amid accusations over tax and underinvestment. Under Hichilema, the dispute was quietly settled, and control restored following a negotiated payment. The political contrast is clear, but the memory is abundantly clearer.  Confidence can be rebuilt. It cannot be assumed.

There is a further tension here that is rarely stated plainly. Zambia is actively courting foreign investors, offering incentives, and resolving disputes in order to accelerate production. At the same time, it is relying on those same investors to deliver the expansion that underpins its national ambitions. The success of the strategy depends on external actors performing well, investing consistently, and remaining committed. That is not a flaw. It is a dependency. It sits alongside the language of sovereignty, not beneath it.

The political landscape reinforces that dynamic. The opposition remains fragmented, with figures such as Miles Sampa and Given Lubinda representing competing factions rather than a unified challenge. That fragmentation strengthens Hichilema’s electoral position and gives him room to manage reform in phases. It also reduces immediate political pressure to accelerate difficult decisions. Reform can be sequenced, it can be delayed and it can be shaped around the electoral calendar.

The deeper question is whether Zambia can break the historical pattern that has defined its relationship with copper. That pattern is not simply one of dependence. It is one of recurring optimism followed by constraint. Each phase has begun with the belief that this time the resource will be managed differently, that the benefits will be more widely distributed, and that the structure will hold. The current moment offers a stronger foundation than previous ones. Global demand is far more robust and strategic interest is more intense. But the underlying test remains unchanged. Can Zambia convert resource advantage into sustained, disciplined development and build institutions that outlast price cycles?  Indeed, can it resist the temptation to substitute rhetoric for execution?

Copper now matters more than it has in decades and Zambia matters because of it. The country stands at a point where its choices will shape not only its own trajectory, but also its position within a wider regional and global system. It can expand production and capture revenue. It can deepen partnerships and diversify risk. It can also begin to move, cautiously, into value-added production.  There are no guarantees.

The irony is not that Zambia is pursuing this path. It would be remarkable if it did not. The irony is that the language surrounding it often suggests a level of control that the structure itself does not fully support. Sovereignty is spoken of in confident terms. Dependency remains present in quieter tones; dumbed down by that confidence.

Zambia’s copper story is not simply about production targets or investor courtship. It is about whether a nation can finally turn a resource into resilience and rhetoric into reality. The stakes are larger than revenue: they are about building institutions that survive price cycles, about ensuring that sovereignty is more than a slogan, and about proving that dependency need not be destiny. Copper has carried Zambia before, but this time the weight is heavier, the world more urgent, and the margin for error far smaller. The test is not whether Zambia can mine more copper; it is whether it can mine a future from it.

Guest writer, Andrew Field, is the founder and author of the chronicle South of the African Equator and photoblog Simply Wild Photography