President Hakainde Hichilema has told Great Lakes countries to stop spending their time on conflict and start using it to create wealth. He said the region should one day be “swapping maize” instead of rotating soldiers. He was officially opening the 20th Ordinary Session of the Regional Inter-Ministerial Committee of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) in Lusaka today. The session coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Pact on Security, Stability and Development in the Great Lakes Region. The President said the reasons the bloc was formed two decades ago remain valid, and may be more urgent now than when it was created.
Zambia stepped in to host the meeting after the Democratic Republic of Congo, which faces what the President called a disease burden, was unable to. He said Zambia and other members would always be ready to keep the region’s work going whatever challenges any one country faces. He said 20 years of meetings run in the same way had produced too little progress. He told delegates he was deliberately stepping outside the routine to provoke a different conversation.
“How much progress have we made by running our meetings the same way for 20 years? It’s time to step outside the box,” the President said.
His central argument was that the region must move from resolving conflicts to preventing them, and that economic growth is the most effective form of prevention. He said many conflicts are rooted in the exclusion of groups of citizens from economic activity. When people are shut out at home, he said, they cross borders and compete for resources in neighbouring countries, exporting problems to sister states. He noted that the same pressures push Africans towards Europe, even though the region is, in his view, wealthier than its northern neighbours. He said time is a fixed resource, and every year spent fighting is a year lost in turning natural wealth into value for citizens.
The centrepiece of his address was mining, which he described as a recurring source of instability in the region. He set out four rules Zambia is applying and urged neighbours to adopt them. First, every mining activity must be legal, and where it is not, governments should work to legalise it. Second, mining must be safe, both for the young miners dying in collapsing pits and for rivers poisoned by mercury used to process gold. Third, it must be formal, so that its output is counted in national economies. Fourth, it must not breed insecurity, which he said spreads from mining areas to whole countries and then across the region.
He disclosed that before the August general election, leaders of his own party had asked him to stop pushing the issue of illegal mining for fear of losing votes. He said he refused because young people were leaving home in the morning and dying in the pits.
“Which serious parent wants to do that, mother or father? There should be none,” President Hichilema said.
He said the party went on to win in those mining areas two months ago. He also revealed that a high-resolution mapping of Zambia’s minerals will be completed by next month, giving the country a clear picture of its resources. He praised Tanzania for processing gold without mercury and said the region must learn from each other. He urged that local artisanal and small-scale miners be deliberately included in the sector, working with partners across borders who have expertise or capital.
On food, the President said Zambia’s production targets under the Grow Zambia Agenda are meant for the region, not for Zambia alone. Those targets include 10 million tonnes of maize, three million tonnes of soya beans and one million tonnes each of wheat and sugar. He criticised the habit of importing food from overseas while neighbours hold surpluses. He said informal traders already move food between Zambia and the DRC on wheelbarrows and bicycles, ahead of any truck or train.
“When people have eaten, they behave differently,” he said.
He challenged the assumption that investment must come from Europe, the Americas or Asia. He said a country’s own citizens should invest first, followed by its neighbours, pointing out that colonial borders drawn in Berlin split families across Katanga and the Copperbelt and across Tunduma and Nakonde. He proposed joint investments on Lake Tanganyika involving Burundi, the DRC, Tanzania and Zambia. He announced plans for a new border crossing with Tanzania between Nakonde, Mbala and Mpulungu.
The President was most pointed on borders. He asked why border posts close at night and dismissed the one-stop border post as an outdated goal.
“We should have non-stop border posts. Technology allows that to happen,” he said.
He expressed frustration at delays on the Zambia-Tanzania power interconnector, saying the region could not always wait on the World Bank’s timelines. He described the Lobito, TAZARA and Walvis Bay corridors as economic corridors for production, processing and trade rather than mere transport routes. Recalling his visit to Tanzania after its elections, he said some Cabinet members had advised him not to go, and that this was exactly why he went. He said Zambia had just rotated its peacekeepers in the Central African Republic and looks forward to the day that is no longer necessary.
He linked regional stability directly to the cost of living at home. He said his government had brought inflation down from 24 percent in 2021 to 6.1 percent. The main threat now, he said, is imported inflation from fuel prices driven by wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
“Did we cause the war? No. But are we not suffering? That’s the point,” President Hichilema said.
He urged the ICGLR secretariat and ministers to put specific, time-bound deliverables on trade, food security, energy and mining into their action matrix. He said a region that manages its own affairs spares the African Union and the United Nations time and money.
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