ECA Calls for a Stronger, Competitive and Regionally Aligned Local Content Strategy in Zambia to Drive Industrial Transformation

Livingstone, Zambia, 18 August 2026 - The UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) recommends that Zambia's successor National Local Content Strategy (NLCS) moves beyond policy ambition to establish a competitive, practical, and enforceable framework. This framework should strengthen domestic productive capacity, promote value addition, and enable Zambian enterprises to participate more effectively in regional and global value chains.

This call was made during stakeholder consultations on the Review and Development of Zambia's successor National Local Content Strategy in Livingstone, Southern Province, Zambia. The consultative meeting was attended by representatives of government ministries and agencies, private sector, anchor companies, SMEs, business associations, and other stakeholders. Ms Olayinka Bandele, Chief of the Inclusive Industrialisation Section at the ECA Subregional Office for Southern Africa, emphasised that Zambia is at a pivotal point in its development agenda, where stronger links between economic growth, accelerated local enterprise development, and industrialisation are essential.

Ms Bandele identified significant opportunities in tourism, pharmaceuticals, electric vehicles, agro-processing, textiles, and light engineering as growth sectors to support domestic economic linkages. She noted that tourism alone creates substantial opportunities for domestic suppliers, food producers, community artisans, and other local enterprises to capture a greater share of tourism expenditure. Similarly, the pharmaceutical sector offers considerable potential for local industrial development, with the domestic market estimated at US$300-400 million.

These stakeholder consultations follow the expiry of Zambia's previous National Local Content Strategy in 2022. The government is seeking stakeholder input to inform a more effective successor framework.

Officially opening the consultative meeting, Livingstone District Commissioner Mrs Eunice Zulu Nawa underlined that the new strategy's success would depend on meaningful participation and commitment from the private sector, local businesses, communities and other stakeholders. She emphasised that local content should be seen as a tool for import substitution and also a tool to build productive capacity, develop Zambian skills, promote technology transfer, support enterprise development, and increase value addition. "The ultimate objective is not simply to replace imports - the bigger objective is to build productive capacity in Zambia," Mrs Nawa said.

The District Commissioner observed that Southern Province's diversified economic base in tourism, agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and energy offers massive opportunities to strengthen local value chains. She called for stronger connections among farmers, processors, manufacturers, tourism operators, transporters, artisans, and other local service providers.

Ms Bandele emphasised that Zambia's successor NLCS should align with regional integration initiatives, especially the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and SADC and COMESA markets. Similarly, the Commission underscored that Zambia has opportunity to champion a more regional approach to local content, enabling enterprises that source inputs across SADC and COMESA to participate in integrated regional value chains. Emerging cross border battery value-chain initiatives between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo demonstrate the potential for collaboration to attract investment, promote mineral beneficiation and position Southern Africa within global green industrial value chains. In the mining sector, domestic procurement requirements introduced from January 2026 are expected to rise progressively to 40 per cent within five years. ECA welcomed the development but stressed that policy requirements must be accompanied by measures that enable local enterprises to build the financial, technical and operational capacity required to compete for major contracts.

Both ECA and the government emphasised that the successor strategy must be supported by ambitious effective legal, institutional, and monitoring mechanisms. The Commissioner underlined that the new strategy should be ambitious, practical, measurable and enforceable, with clear indicators, monitoring mechanisms, measures to address enterprise capacity constraints and stronger linkages between large companies and local suppliers. The Strategy should have strong mechanisms for institutional coordination, stakeholder engagement, and alignment and with Zambia's regional trade obligations.

ECA emphasised that success should be measured not by the existence of another policy document, but by tangible increases in domestic value addition and greater participation of Zambian enterprises in higher-value stages of production.

The Livingstone consultation is part of a broader stakeholder engagement process to gather evidence, experiences, and practical recommendations to inform the development of Zambia's successor National Local Content Strategy.

Media Contact

Bedson Nyoni
Senior Information Management Assistant
ECA Subregional Office for Southern Africa
Email: [email protected]

Issued by:
Communications Section
Economic Commission for Africa
PO Box 3001
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
Tel: +251 11 551 5826
E-mail: [email protected]