50 Fun Facts About Zambia

What is the capital of Zambia?

It also hosts the headquarters of COMESA, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa.

What was Zambia called before independence in 1964?

The old name honoured the mining magnate whose company ran the territory; the new one comes from the country's great river.

Zambia takes its name from which river?

The river rises in Zambia's north-west, loops through Angola and returns to form the southern border with Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Who was Zambia's first president, in office from 1964 to 1991?

'KK' promoted an ideology he called Zambian Humanism and ran a one-party state from 1972; he died in 2021 aged 97.

What national motto did the country's first president coin for his young, multi-ethnic country?

Zambia has some 70 ethnic groups, the Bemba being the largest.

Which trade-union leader beat Kaunda in the 1991 election to become Zambia's second president?

A Pentecostal Christian, he declared Zambia a 'Christian nation' in the 1996 constitution.

Zambia declared independence on the closing day of the 1964 Olympics, making it the first country to do what?

Its athletes had marched in under the colonial name; the country's only Olympic medals since are a boxing bronze and a 1996 hurdles silver.

On what date does Zambia celebrate independence?

The prime minister became president that day in 1964, as the colony became a republic within the Commonwealth.

Which metal has historically dominated Zambia's economy, making up about 69% of its exports in 2019?

Zambia is Africa's second-largest producer and the world's seventh; the kwacha's exchange rate moves with the metal's price.

Zambia's flag is unusual for placing its emblem at the fly rather than the centre. What is the emblem?

The green field stands for agriculture, the red, black and orange stripes for the freedom struggle, the people and the country's mineral wealth.

The name of Zambia's currency, the kwacha, means what in several of the country's languages?

It echoes the nationalist slogan of a 'new dawn of freedom'; one kwacha is 100 ngwee.

What is the local Lozi name for Victoria Falls, meaning 'the smoke that thunders'?

The spray can be seen from 20 km away; the Zambian side lies inside a national park of the same name.

Which Scottish missionary was the first European recorded to see Victoria Falls, in November 1855?

He named them for his queen; the Zambian tourist town beside the falls is named after him.

Victoria Falls is classed as the world's largest waterfall on the basis of what?

At 1,708 metres wide and 108 metres high it forms the largest single sheet of falling water on Earth, though others are taller or carry more water.

Kariba Dam, opened in 1959, created a lake so large that what operation was needed?

Operation Noah saved around 6,000 large animals from the rising water between 1958 and 1961; the dam is shared with Zimbabwe.

Kalambo Falls, on the Tanzanian border at a Rift Valley lake's southern tip, is notable as what?

It drops 235 metres in one leap, and archaeologists have found some of the world's earliest stone tools nearby.

Zambia's highest point, Mafinga Central, is on the border with which country?

At 2,339 metres it is part of the Nyika Plateau range; most of Zambia is a plateau between 1,000 and 1,600 metres.

Zambia has how many neighbouring countries?

The link to Botswana is a tiny sliver of border in the Chobe District; Namibia touches Zambia via the Caprivi Strip.

Kasanka National Park hosts what has been called the largest mammal migration on Earth. Of what animal?

Close to ten million bats descend on a small patch of swamp forest each October to December.

Which archaic human skull, up to 300,000 years old, was found in a Zambian mine in 1921?

Also called Kabwe 1, it is usually assigned to Homo heidelbergensis and is held by the Natural History Museum in London.

Whose company obtained mineral rights from the Litunga of the Lozi in 1888, opening the way to British rule?

The British South Africa Company then administered the territory for decades; Rhodes's scout Frederick Burnham found the great Kafue mineral deposits in 1895.

From 1953 to 1963 Northern Rhodesia was federated with Southern Rhodesia and which other territory?

African leaders in the two northern territories opposed a union dominated by Southern Rhodesia's white settlers; it dissolved on 31 December 1963.

What is nshima, the staple of Zambian meals?

It is eaten by hand, rolled into a ball and dipped into relishes of vegetables, beans, fish or meat.

Zambia's football team died in a 1993 plane crash after take-off from which African capital?

All 30 aboard, including 18 players, died when the pilot shut down the wrong engine after a fire; they are buried at Heroes' Acre outside the national stadium in the capital.

Zambia won its first Africa Cup of Nations in 2012 by beating which team on penalties in the final?

The final was in Libreville, yards from where the 1993 team had crashed, which made the 8–7 shoot-out win extraordinarily emotional.

Zambia's Kalusha Bwalya scored a hat-trick in a 4–0 win over which country at the 1988 Seoul Olympics?

He was spared the 1993 crash because he was flying separately from his club in the Netherlands.

Which Zambian won Olympic silver in the 400 metres hurdles at Atlanta 1996?

He was world champion in 1991; Zambia has never sent a team to the Winter Olympics.

Which African lake, sharing its shore with Zambia, has the country's most endemic fish species?

Zambia has around 490 fish species; the lake is the world's longest freshwater lake and one of its deepest.

Which vice-president, a Zambian of Scottish descent, became acting president when Michael Sata died in 2014?

He served until Edgar Lungu won the January 2015 election; Sata was the country's fifth president.

Who won Zambia's 2021 presidential election with 59% of the vote, defeating incumbent Edgar Lungu?

It was his sixth attempt at the presidency; Lungu conceded on television, continuing Zambia's record of peaceful transfers of power.

Under its 1996 constitution, Zambia is officially declared what?

Freedom of religion is still protected; Pentecostal churches boomed after President Chiluba, himself Pentecostal, took office.

Which local language is most widely spoken in the capital?

Bemba dominates the mining towns of the north; English is the official language.

Which Zambian province, home to Kitwe and Ndola, produces about a quarter of the country's GDP?

Industrial mining there began in the late 1920s and triggered rapid urbanisation; the population still clusters along the railway south to Livingstone.

Which 1964 revolt by Alice Lenshina's followers was the new president's first internal conflict?

Her Lumpa Church refused to recognise the state; hundreds died before the movement was crushed.

Which annual ceremony sees the Litunga of the Lozi move by royal barge from the flooded plain to higher ground?

It takes place in Western Province at the end of the rains; the other options are also traditional ceremonies of other Zambian peoples.

Zambia's two subspecies unique to the country include the Kafue lechwe and which giraffe?

The lechwe is a swamp antelope of the Kafue Flats; Zambia counts 242 mammal species in all.

Zambia's rainy season, its summer, runs over which months?

The dry season splits into a cool spell to August and a hot one to October; altitude keeps the whole country milder than its latitude suggests.

Roughly what share of Zambia drains south to the Indian Ocean rather than into the Congo?

A small patch in the north-east drains into Tanzania's closed Lake Rukwa basin instead.

Which peoples inhabited Zambia before Bantu farmers arrived around AD 300?

They left rock paintings at sites like Mwela and Nachikufu Cave; the Twa lived around the Kafue Flats and Lukanga Swamp.

The Bemba and related Zambian peoples trace their origins to which 14th-century Congo kingdom?

The Lunda empire budded off from it, and Lunda kings traded metals and slaves with both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts.

Zambia's national football team is nicknamed the Chipolopolo, meaning what?

The name nods to the country's copper; the team's 2012 title came 19 years after the Gabon disaster.

In 2023 Zambia produced about 698,000 tonnes of its main export metal — roughly what share of world output?

That ranks it seventh in the world; Chinese firms hold major stakes in several mines under the Belt and Road Initiative.

Which regional trade bloc has its headquarters in Lusaka?

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa stretches from Egypt to Eswatini.

Roughly what was Zambia's population at the 2022 census?

It is one of sub-Saharan Africa's most urbanised countries, with 44% of people living along the main transport corridors.

Which is Zambia's largest ethnic group, at roughly a third of the population?

The Nyanja and Tonga follow at about 18% and 17%, and the country counts some 73 ethnic groups in all.

What is the official language of Zambia, used for government, education and law?

It has also become the home language of many inter-ethnic families, while Nyanja and Bemba dominate the streets of Lusaka and the Copperbelt.

In which year was Zambia's copper mining industry nationalised?

Production fell sharply under state control and recovered only after privatisation in the 1990s.

Under which 1972 body's recommendations did Kaunda institute one-party rule?

Multiparty democracy returned in 1991 after riots and a failed coup the previous year.

How many national parks does Zambia have?

Together with 34 game management areas they anchor a tourism sector that peaked at 9.8% of GDP in 2019.

The Benguela railway, closed to Zambian traffic by the late 1970s, ran west through which country?

Civil strife in the Portuguese colonies cut the route just as copper prices collapsed.