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Dear
JCTR Bulletin Readers:
In the last half of the year 2008 and in the first quarter of 2009, a new challenge terrorised the whole world in the name of the global financial crisis. The challenge has been referred to by many different names sometimes not meaning the same, like credit crunch, global financial meltdown, recession and many others. In Zambia, these terms are uttered by many people, even those in streets, bus drivers, marketers, security guards, all claiming that the crisis has hit them hard. Although the financial crisis has not affected developing countries, like Zambia, as much as developed countries in the Americas and Europe, the poor and the most vulnerable continue to be the hardest hit and these are mostly found in developing countries. It has to be recognised that although most of the problems now in developing nations are being attributed to the crisis, it would be wrong to take such a simplistic view because most of the problems in these nations were there even before the crisis. Some individuals and companies are taking advantage of the crisis to make more profits and pay their workers low wages even when their businesses are not really affected. Take for example, the mining sector in Zambia. Even before the crisis, copper prices were fluctuating, ownership of mines continued to change, retrenchments occurred, and environmental problems existed. This is not to deny that the crisis has exacerbated this problem but solutions to the problems will not be found in simply attributing all our problems to the crisis. Strategies that could have worked before the crisis in the mining sector and other sectors could still be of help now in the crisis.
The 2009 annual budget in Zambia gave hope and mixed feelings by the people on whether the budget was responding to development needs of the people and whether the budget was sensitive to the global financial crisis. Despite these mixed feelings, it remains clear that developing countries like Zambia will only significantly grow if they diversify their sources of revenue, if they manage their borrowed and budgeted resources well, if they begin to put strategies in place to be self-reliant and not aid-reliant, and if politicians change from self-centred ones to those that are at the service of the people.
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