The Mining Industry And Local Content Policy In Zambia

Local Content Policies (LCP) are often portrayed as a useful policy tool to tackle the apparent paradox in many resource-rich economies of the Global South of great mineral wealth and pervasive inequality, poverty, and lack of structural transformation. LCPs are thus high on the agenda for African Heads of State in their struggles to turn non-renewable commodities into broad-based development. This is also the case in Zambia. Despite serious work with LCPs in Zambia over a 15 years period, LCPs have not led to structural transformation. This chapter seeks to explain why. It argues that several interrelated factors account this including include insufficient capabilities among domestic firms to supply goods and services of a sufficient quality to the multinational mining corporations; LCPs characterised by too high expectations; lack of focus on both demand capacity and intersectoral in LCPs (and related policies); and insufficient finance to support the LCPs.