Zambia’s betrayal of pan-Africanism
…visa walls, mining without Zambians, and a Foreign Policy in search of itself
By Elvis Ng’andwe
AFRICA today stands at a historic junction. With the launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), African leaders promised a new era, defined by intra-Africa trade, free movement of people, and shared prosperity. On paper, the vision is bold. In practice, however, some states appear to be walking in the opposite direction.
Take Zambia: While publicly embracing continental integration, Zambia continues to impose restrictive visa regimes on fellow African countries, including Ghana, the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain independence, and a country whose founding father, Kwame Nkrumah, played a crucial role in supporting Zambia’s own liberation struggle. Today, Ghanaians must pay for visas to enter Zambia.
Meanwhile, citizens from several former colonial powers, states that extracted African labour, transported our ancestors into slavery, and continue to benefit disproportionately from Africa’s raw materials, enjoy visa-free access. This contradiction should trouble every Zambian.
A betrayal of history: Pan-Africanism was never a slogan. It was a liberation philosophy forged in sacrifice, solidarity, and shared struggle.
What would Kenneth Kaunda say today, seeing Zambians welcome Europeans with open borders while erecting bureaucratic walls against fellow Africans? What would Julius Nyerere think of an Africa that preaches unity but practices exclusion? How would Nelson Mandela interpret a continent that celebrates AfCFTA summits while treating African mobility as a threat?
These leaders understood that political independence without African unity was incomplete. They believed borders drawn by colonial cartographers should never become psychological barriers among Africans themselves. Yet today, that is exactly what is happening.
AfCFTA without Africans? AfCFTA is not merely about lowering tariffs or harmonising customs procedures. Its success depends on people: traders, professionals, students, entrepreneurs, and workers moving across borders. You cannot meaningfully integrate markets while fragmenting people.
Visa restrictions on Africans undermine intra-African trade, labour mobility, academic exchange, cultural diplomacy, and regional innovation. They reinforce a damaging hierarchy in which African passports are treated as liabilities, while Western passports are treated as assets. This is not integration. It is internalised colonial logic.
Security and sovereignty—But at what cost? Governments often justify visa barriers in the name of national security or economic protection. These concerns deserve consideration. But they must be balanced against continental commitments and historical responsibility.
Other African states have demonstrated that visa liberalisation can coexist with security screening and migration management. Smart borders are possible. Blanket restrictions on fellow Africans are simply policy inertia dressed up as pragmatism.
More troubling still is selective openness—welcoming former colonisers while excluding African partners. This reveals priorities that deserve serious public scrutiny.
A foreign policy in search of itself: Beyond visas lies a deeper structural problem, Zambia today appears to operate without a coherent, publicly articulated foreign policy doctrine-particularly toward Africa.
The current regime’s foreign policy posture is largely unrecognised in substance, reactive rather than strategic, and disconnected from regional integration priorities. Development is increasingly equated with association with Europeans and other non-African partners, reinforcing the dangerous belief that progress must be externally validated.
This reflects a troubling lack of confidence in fellow Africans, and in Africa’s own capacity for collective advancement.
Even more alarming is that Zambian citizens themselves are increasingly treated like foreigners in their own economy.
Mining without Zambians: Nowhere is this contradiction clearer than in the mining sector.
Despite being one of Africa’s leading copper producers, ordinary Zambians remain largely excluded from ownership, decision-making, and meaningful participation in the extractive economy. Access to mining rights is structurally tilted in favour of foreign corporations, while local investors face prohibitive licensing costs, opaque regulatory procedures, limited access to finance, and weak institutional support. In practice, Zambians are spectators in their own resource economy.
Small and medium-scale Zambian entrepreneurs struggle to obtain exploration licences or production permits. Where licences are granted, they are often undermined by lack of capital, technical assistance, and market access. Meanwhile, multinational firms receive expansive concessions, generous tax incentives, and regulatory flexibility-frequently negotiated behind closed doors. The message is devastatingly clear, Zambians are not trusted to manage their own wealth.
Foreign investors extract billions in mineral value, yet communities around mining areas remain trapped in poverty, exposed to polluted rivers, degraded farmland, and collapsing fisheries. Aquatic ecosystems are destroyed, livelihoods erased, and environmental violations routinely go unpunished. Environmental harm is socialised. Profits are externalised.
What should be strategic national assets are reduced to export pipelines feeding external economies. Technology transfer is minimal. Local value addition remains weak. Employment is often precarious. Zambians are left with exhausted land, sick communities, and shrinking economic sovereignty. This is not a failure of geology. It is a failure of policy.
A development model that prioritises foreign extractive capital while marginalising local participation reproduces colonial economic structures under modern legal frameworks. It treats Zambia as a quarry rather than a country.
Zambia in SADC–present but not purposeful: Equally concerning is Zambia’s weak engagement with regional integration. There is no clearly defined foreign policy vision within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) or other African Regional Economic Communities. Zambia participates institutionally—but not strategically.
There is little visible leadership on labour mobility, regional value chains, industrial complementarities, harmonised investment standards, or environmental accountability. Mineral extraction is not embedded within a regional industrial strategy aligned with AfCFTA. Instead of leveraging resources to build manufacturing hubs and cross-border supply chains, Zambia remains locked into raw export dependency.
A country that once stood at the forefront of African liberation now risks becoming peripheral to African integration.
True sovereignty is not demonstrated by distancing oneself from African partners while courting external actors. It is demonstrated by building resilient regional alliances, empowering local capital, protecting national ecosystems, and placing African solidarity at the centre of development policy.
Reclaiming the spirit of pan-Africanism: Pan-Africanism is not nostalgia. It is a strategic necessity in a world of powerful trading blocs and intensifying geopolitical competition. Zambia and other SADC states, must realign policy with principle.
This means prioritising visa-free or visa-on-arrival access for Africans; simplifying mining rights for Zambian investors; enforcing environmental standards without exception; mandating community benefit agreements; promoting domestic processing; strengthening regional value chains; and reclaiming leadership within SADC.
If AfCFTA is to be more than a ceremonial agreement, Africans must be allowed to meet, move, work, and build together. Otherwise, we risk creating a free trade area without free Africans. And that would be the ultimate betrayal of Pan-Africanism.
In Bemba we say “Akacila ka mbushi kasengula apokekele”
About the Author:
Elvis Ng’andwe is a Zambian lawyer, an Advocate of the High Court for Zambia.
