Zambia took independence under Kaunda on 24 October 1964
Landlocked Zambia in Southern Africa borders the DRC, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, and a tiny Caprivi strip geometry. Khoisan peoples lived there first; the thirteenth-century Bantu expansion reshaped the plateau before British consolidation after the 1890 Ultimatum.
The Broken Hill or Kabwe skull, dated to somewhere between 300,000 and 125,000 years BC, shows early humans lived here long ago. Later the land belonged to Khoisan and Batwa hunter-gatherers; the Twa split into a Kafue Flats group and a Lukanga Swamp group, and rock art at the Mwela paintings, Mumbwa Caves and Nachikufu Cave is credited to these early peoples. What is known of this deep past comes from oral tradition, archaeology and mostly foreign written accounts.
Bantu speakers originated around today’s Cameroon and Nigeria and, beginning about 5,000 years ago, spread across much of Africa along a western route through the Congo Basin and an eastern one past the Great Lakes, one of history’s largest migrations; they are thought to have carried ironworking with them. One account has them settling in Zambia from about AD 300. Early villages had no chiefs, shared field work, kept cattle and moved on when slash-and-burn farming exhausted the soil, and missionaries later remarked on how self-reliant these communities were.
Britain consolidated control after the 1890 Ultimatum, and from 1911 to 1964 the territory was called Northern Rhodesia. At independence on 24 October 1964 it took the name Zambia, after the Zambezi, a river name that may mean the grand river. Kenneth Kaunda served first as prime minister and then as president, and his UNIP party governed until 1991.
Minerals, wildlife, forests, fresh water and farmland give the country considerable resources, yet a 2018 estimate found 47.9 percent of the population living in multidimensional poverty. Lusaka hosts the headquarters of COMESA, the regional common market.
Source: Zambia
