How the re-elected government uses its new dominance will influence Zambian politics well beyond this election.
Articles on Edgar Lungu
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Zambia’s new president will have to balance austerity and the high expectations of the many unemployed young people and struggling people who voted for him.
Whoever wins the elections will face two key challenges: reviving the country’s democratic credentials and stimulating the economy.
Frustration is growing among opposition supporters who believe the last election was stolen.
Distrust of the electoral commission runs deep in the opposition, which may well lead to increased tensions ahead of and following the polls.
Is a perfect storm brewing in the African nation?
Too often developments in one country are seen in isolation. In southern Africa events in one affect others in the region.
Zambia has gone from a country where people engaged freely in open political debate to one where most people now look over their shoulders to see who’s listening.
Zambia’s president is securing powers to consolidate his political control while generating ‘plausible deniability’ to whether or not he has fatally undermined democracy.
The IMF’s decision to go ahead with a bailout package for Zambia, despite the government’s democratic failings, could embolden the president to pursue an authoritarian strategy.
The state of democracy isn’t looking good in southern Africa – but these countries’ Western ‘partners’ don’t really seem to care.
The world’s media, which has in the past found Zambia uninteresting, are suddenly paying more attention to the impoverished nation, for all the wrong reasons.
Three democracies once considered beacons of hope are in varying states of disarray.
Technocrats across the African continent are battling to change the direction of corrupt, violent governments
Zambia’s Edgar Lungu shouldn’t consider his presidential victory to mean business as usual in the management of the economy; nor an opportunity to waste and plunder.
As Zambia prepares to go to the polls again the entire party system is in flux, electoral violence has been worryingly frequent and the country’s democratic credentials are increasingly in doubt
Top contributors
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Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of London
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Professor of Democracy, University of Birmingham
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Director & SARChI Research Chair: Political Economy of Migration in the SADC Region, University of Pretoria
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Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
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Professor of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University
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Lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand
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Associate Professor, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University
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PhD Student, Michigan State University
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Professor, Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin
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Senior lecturer in the Department of Political and Administrative Studies at the University of Malawi and Research Associate, Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town
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Emeritus Professor, University of Cape Town
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University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and African Studies, Michigan State University