IN ZAMBIA, EVEN THE POOREST FAMILIES FIND TIME AND MONEY TO COORDINATE A FUNERAL OF A RELATIVE BUT NOT MONEY TO FORM A FAMILY BUSINESS

By Dr Lubinda Haabazoka

Everyday we speak about Zambia participation in the economy. But have we ever had a chance to study why it’s very difficult for Zambians to graduate from selling tomatoes on the streets to owning a tomato processing plant?

In order for Zambia to develop, we need to harness and support Zambian businesses. When I say Zambian businesses I don’t necessarily mean black Zambians. I mean all Zambians of all races, gender, black, white, ebony or green.

It’s very important for a nation to harness Zambian entrepreneurs because these people make money in Zambia, bank money in Zambia and retire in Zambia. They produce the most stable GDP because their profits remain in Zambia!

When you look at Kenya, Tanzania and even Nigeria, you will find that the locals are huge business people groomed and supported by governments. In Nigeria, there was even a government program of creating billionaires! In Zambia that must be a taboo!

The first stop we need to make is to ensure that small businesses that are younger than 5 years pay only 6% tax! A lot of exemptions should also be made in terms of fees paid to both central and local government.

Government should also get its act together and collect only one tax from businesses. Then they should go and share between Napsa, NHIMA, ZRA, Skills level, local authorities and many other people that collect such fees from companies. Compliance in itself in Zambia is very expensive! I would like to commend ZRA for the efficiency in tax collections in the recent years but honestly a company cannot be speaking to 10 different agencies for licences when all these agencies represent one central government! Let one authority collect one fee and give businesses a break!

In Zambia, we frustrate businesses and discourage them from growing because we don’t care about the struggles of the business person but we are just interested in choking them with both administrative and economic barriers of doing business.

Mindset is also very important. Colleagues why are we so jealous of successful people aii? Our Zambian mindset is such that we like investigating wealth but not poverty. When you go to Kenya, they celebrate their own millionaires. When you go to Nigeria, they love Dangote. Today we have big Nigerian banks operating in Africa but look how we stressed Matani here in Zambia? The man had to run away from finance bank instead of government giving him loans to open up branches world wide!!!!

We also need to learn to work in partnerships. Maybe we need to change our education system because in Zambia we have very unhealthy competition! From primary school, kids are made to pass number 1,2,3…50! Imagine how bad kids feel when they pass number 41 and the friend is number one. You develop hatred for high flyers just in kids. By the time that child is 30 years, anything that looks like hard work and success will have to be pulled down!!! Remember there can only be one number 1 in a class so them group three pupils are in the majority. In classes we even group pupils as group 1, group 2 and group 3! Because of this phenomenon, Zambians can’t work in business partnerships coz we hate each other, too jealous and when your partner is doing great all you want is to bring their name into the mud! The only advantage is that God has other plans for man!

So we need to have a meeting as a nation and decide what we want to achieve! You can’t have a nation of high tempers on political matters and no interest when it comes to business. But when your friends succeed in business you want to come and bring it down, make it difficult to do business and many other spanners!

When you go to Kenya, helicopters are flown by every Jim and jack. Here in Zambia mmmm don’t even try! The guy who bought a Bugatti was investigated! So how can you now create role models? People would rather hide their wealth or not make any wealth at all because society judges rich people harshly!

Colleagues to be poor in some way is a sign of laziness. Don’t even hate on me for this statement! When a person really wants money, they can get it. Look at the boys pushing wheelbarrows in town! That’s an initiative. So society should harness those guys and graduate them to riding tricycles and carry goods around town! That’s how helpful societies operate! For some people though, they want to work, they have ideas but no capital and help! They are not lazy! They really want to work! Those people we should help as a society from taxes collected from those with surplus!

We should not be spending time on Facebook waiting to pull down the next successful guy! Let’s work bane, change the mindset, make lives east for ourselves! A state is an agreement between people! How we want to live that how we should create it. So how about discussing real issues to improve ourselves?

We can’t continue like this. When are we going to get rich? A country is only good when it can solve its own problems!

The struggle continues…