Zambia is a landlocked country in southern-central Africa, a high plateau land of savanna, rivers, and abundant wildlife. Named after the great Zambezi River, which forms part of its border and plunges over the spectacular Victoria Falls, it is famous for its national parks and for its copper, the metal on which its economy has long depended. Stable and peaceful by the standards of its region, Zambia is a nation of many peoples bound together by a shared sense of national unity.
The lands of Zambia were settled by Bantu-speaking peoples and were home to a number of kingdoms, including those of the Lunda and the Bemba, which traded across the region. In the late nineteenth century the territory came under British control through the actions of Cecil Rhodes's company, becoming the colony of Northern Rhodesia. Its rich copper deposits drew mining and migration. Zambia gained independence peacefully in 1964 under Kenneth Kaunda, its first president, who led the country for its first decades.
Zambia sits on a high plateau that gives the tropical country a moderate climate, a landscape of rolling savanna woodland, grassy plains, and great rivers, above all the Zambezi. The river marks the southern border and tumbles over Victoria Falls, one of the largest and most magnificent waterfalls in the world, shared with Zimbabwe and known locally as the smoke that thunders. Zambia also holds vast wetlands and lakes and a network of national parks teeming with elephants, lions, and other wildlife.
The flag of Zambia is green, with a distinctive panel of three vertical stripes of red, black, and orange in the lower fly corner, beneath a soaring orange eagle. The green represents the country's lush vegetation, the red the struggle for freedom, the black the people, and the orange its mineral wealth, above all copper. The eagle, taken from the national coat of arms, symbolises the ability of Zambians to rise above their problems.
Zambia is an overwhelmingly Christian country, indeed officially declared a Christian nation, with the great majority belonging to a wide range of Protestant churches and to the Roman Catholic Church, the result of extensive missionary work. Worship and church life are a prominent part of Zambian society. Traditional African beliefs, with their reverence for ancestors and spirits, also endure and are often blended with Christianity, while a small Muslim minority lives mainly in the towns.
Zambian cuisine centres on nshima, a thick porridge made from ground maize that is the staple of nearly every meal, rolled into balls by hand and dipped into accompanying dishes. These relishes include vegetables such as pumpkin leaves, beans, and groundnuts, along with meat or fish, including the small dried fish from the country's lakes and rivers. The cooking is simple and hearty, built around the produce of the land in a country where farming sustains most families.
Agriculture employs most Zambians, much of it small-scale farming of maize, the staple crop, along with cassava, groundnuts, and other foods, while commercial farms produce sugar, tobacco, cotton, and increasingly maize and soya for export. The economy as a whole, however, has long been dominated by copper: Zambia sits on the great Copperbelt and is one of Africa's largest producers of the metal, whose price swings have a powerful effect on national fortunes. Diversifying beyond copper is a central goal.
The pre-colonial kingdoms, the era of British rule and copper mining, and above all the peaceful achievement of independence in 1964 under Kenneth Kaunda shaped modern Zambia. Kaunda's long rule gave way to multiparty democracy in the 1990s, and Zambia has since stood out in its region for its political stability and peaceful transfers of power. The country's fortunes have continued to rise and fall with the global price of the copper on which it depends.
Zambia has a population of around 20 million people, made up of around seventy ethnic groups, the largest including the Bemba, Tonga, and Lozi, speaking many languages with English serving as the official tongue. Despite this diversity, the country has a strong sense of national unity and a reputation for peaceful coexistence. The population is young and increasingly urban, concentrated along the line of rail and the Copperbelt and in the capital, Lusaka, in the centre of the country.
