47 Fun Facts About Zambia

What is the capital of Zambia?

Lusaka became capital in 1935 because the colonial government wanted a more central seat than its old one in the far south, closer to the mining towns that drove the economy.

What was Zambia called before independence in 1964?

Northern Rhodesia was run for decades by a chartered company rather than the Crown; Britain took direct control only in 1924, forty years before independence.

Which river forms much of Zambia's southern border and plunges over Victoria Falls?

The Zambezi gave Zambia its name at independence; it rises in the far north-west, loops out through a neighbour and returns to mark the whole border with Zimbabwe.

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

Kenneth Kaunda ran a one-party state for much of that time, yet when he restored multiparty elections in 1991 and lost, he handed over power peacefully.

Which motto appears on Zambia's coat of arms?

One Zambia, One Nation was chosen to stress unity in a country of more than 70 ethnic groups; 'Zambia Shall Be Free' was an independence leader's memoir and 'Stand and Sing of Zambia' opens the anthem.

What set Zambia's team apart at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics?

It changed its name mid-Games: independence fell on the day of the closing ceremony, so the team that had marched in as a British protectorate paraded out behind a new placard reading 'Zambia'.

Which observance shares Zambia's Independence Day, 24 October?

United Nations Day falls then because the UN Charter took effect on 24 October 1945, once the five permanent Security Council members and most other signatories had ratified it.

Which battery metal is mined as a by-product of Zambia's copper?

Cobalt sits in the same ore as the copper that has long dominated Zambia's exports, so the mines recover it as a by-product; the same mineral belt runs on across the northern border.

Which emblem sits at the fly of Zambia's flag rather than the centre?

An African fish eagle already sat on the colonial coat of arms, but on the flag it flies free in the upper corner to stand for the people's ability to rise above their problems.

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

Dawn: the name echoes the independence movement's promise of a 'new dawn of freedom', and the kwacha took over from the Zambian pound in 1968.

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

Mosi-oa-Tunya describes the spray, which rises more than 400 metres above the gorge and looks from afar like smoke; the national park on the Zambian bank carries the name too.

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

David Livingstone first looked over the edge from an island on the lip of the falls, which now bears his name, and he named the cataract for Queen Victoria.

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

Its combined width and height, about 1,708 metres by 108, produce the largest single sheet of falling water on Earth, which is the measure behind the title.

Which dam, shared with Zimbabwe, made a lake so vast that Operation Noah had to rescue thousands of stranded animals?

Kariba's rising waters threatened wildlife across the valley, so rangers caught and moved some 6,000 animals; about 57,000 Tonga people were also resettled from their riverside homes.

At Zambia's Kalambo Falls, archaeologists reported in 2023 the oldest known structure built from which material?

Wood rarely survives, but waterlogged ground preserved two logs joined by a cut notch for at least 476,000 years, so they were shaped before our own species existed.

Zambia's highest point, Mafinga Central, stands in the far north-east on the border with which country?

Malawi shares Mafinga Central, a summit so little surveyed that published heights differ by several metres.

Which country's border with Zambia is about 150 metres long?

Botswana and Zambia meet for only about 150 metres of river, where four countries almost touch; until a bridge opened in 2021, a ferry was the only direct link between them.

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

Broken Hill Man was dug out by miners at what is now Kabwe and taken to Britain, and Zambia has been negotiating to get the skull back.

Whose company secured a mineral concession from Lewanika, the Lozi king, in 1890?

Cecil Rhodes sent an agent to Lewanika, who wanted British protection; the king later felt deceived, because the deal put his country under a commercial company that ran it until 1924.

Which territory joined colonial Zambia and Zimbabwe in the Central African Federation from 1953 to 1963?

Nyasaland, today's Malawi, was the third member; Africans in the two northern territories campaigned against a union dominated by the white-ruled south, and it was dissolved at the end of 1963.

What is nshima, the staple of Zambian meals?

A thick porridge of pounded white maize is a fairly recent staple: maize reached Africa from the Americas only in the 16th and 17th centuries, displacing sorghum and millet.

Most of Zambia's national football team died in a 1993 plane crash just after take-off from which African city?

The military plane came down in the sea off Libreville, Gabon, after a refuelling stop, killing all 30 aboard, including 18 players; investigators found the pilot had shut down the wrong engine.

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

Ivory Coast lost 8-7 on penalties after a goalless final, Stoppila Sunzu scoring the winner in the very city off whose coast the 1993 team's plane had crashed.

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

Zambia thrashed Italy 4-0 in the group stage, Kalusha Bwalya scoring three; he was spared the 1993 crash because he travelled separately from his Dutch club.

Millions of which animals gather in Zambia's Kasanka National Park each year in a famous migration?

Fruit bats pour into one small patch of forest for about three months from October to feast on its fruit, a gathering often called the largest mammal migration on Earth.

Which Rift Valley lake on Zambia's northern border is home to hundreds of cichlid fish found nowhere else?

Tanganyika is the world's longest freshwater lake and the second deepest, an ancient basin where at least 250 kinds of cichlid evolved that live nowhere else.

Which vice-president became acting president when Michael Sata died in office in 2014?

Guy Scott became mainland Africa's first white head of state since apartheid ended, but a constitutional clause on candidates' parentage was held to bar him from standing in the election that followed.

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

Hakainde Hichilema won at his sixth attempt, four years after spending four months in jail on a treason charge for allegedly failing to give way to the president's motorcade.

Under its 1996 constitution, Zambia is officially declared what?

A Christian nation: the clause was pressed by President Frederick Chiluba, a fervent born-again Christian elected in 1991, and it sits beside a guarantee of freedom of conscience and religion.

Which local language is the everyday lingua franca of Zambia's capital?

Nyanja belongs to the east of the country, where it is also called Chewa, yet an urban variety known as Town Nyanja became the common speech of the capital.

Which Zambian province is home to Kitwe and Ndola?

Copperbelt mining took off after ore was found in the late 1920s, which pulled in European technicians and migrant workers and made the province the country's industrial heart.

Alice Lenshina, whose followers fought Zambia's incoming government in 1964, led what kind of movement?

A breakaway Christian sect: Lenshina's Lumpa Church refused to pay taxes and withdrew into its own villages, and hundreds died when troops moved against it in 1964.

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

Kuomboka means 'to get out of water': as the floods rise at the end of the rains, the king's great barge, topped with a model elephant, is paddled to his court on higher ground.

Thornicroft's giraffe lives wild only in which Zambian region?

The Luangwa Valley has kept its giraffes cut off from all others, so they count as a distinct form numbering only several hundred animals.

What keeps Zambia milder than its tropical latitude would suggest?

Its high plateau altitude does it: most of the country sits more than 1,000 metres up, which takes the edge off the tropical heat.

Northern Zambia's rain drains not to the Indian Ocean but into which river system?

The Congo starts here: the Chambeshi, which rises in Zambia's north-east, is counted as its most remote headstream, so this water ends up in the Atlantic.

Which peoples inhabited Zambia before Bantu-speaking farmers arrived?

Khoisan and Batwa hunter-gatherers held the land until Bantu-speaking migrants settled it, bringing ironworking with them; rock paintings in Zambian caves are their legacy.

Which central African kingdom do many peoples of northern Zambia claim as their ancestral homeland?

Luba country lay beyond the Luapula River in today's Katanga; tradition says the migrants left it and crossed the river into Zambia before 1740.

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

Chipolopolo means 'the Copper Bullets', a nod to the metal that built the country's economy; the team's 2012 continental title came 19 years after the 1993 air disaster.

Mines near Kitwe make Zambia one of the world's leading sources of which gemstone?

Emeralds from Zambia are said to be a cooler, bluer green than Colombia's warm ones, a tint put down to the iron in the crystals.

Which African trade bloc is headquartered in Zambia's capital?

COMESA, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, reaches well beyond its name: Egypt and Libya, on the Mediterranean, are both members.

Which country financed and built the 1970s Tazara railway from Zambia to Tanzania's coast?

China paid for and built the line between 1970 and 1975 so that landlocked Zambia could reach the sea without depending on the white-ruled states to its south.

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

Bemba speakers moved south in the 1930s to work the mines, which spread their language well beyond its northern homeland; about a third of Zambians now speak it.

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

English is the only official language, yet in the 2010 census fewer than 2% of Zambians named it as their main tongue; seven local languages share the classroom in early primary school.

Which state-owned company, formed in 1982, ran Zambia's mines until privatisation?

ZCCM, short for Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines, gathered the mines nationalised around 1970 into one state giant, then was broken up and sold to private buyers by 2000.

The tune of Zambia's national anthem also forms part of which country's anthem?

South Africa sings the hymn 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika' as the first part of its anthem; Enoch Sontonga, a Xhosa composer, wrote it in 1897, and Zambia kept his melody but gave it new words about itself.

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

Angola's civil war, which broke out soon after independence from Portugal in 1975, wrecked the line and cut one of landlocked Zambia's main routes to the sea.