ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a detailed analysis of industrial strategies developed and implemented immediately after Northern Rhodesia became independent in October 1964. It focuses on analysing the policy decisions which the Zambian government took to promote industrial development in the country and why the government decided to take these decisions. A detailed discussion of trends in industrial development in Zambia after independence up to the time when industrial policy was abandoned following the introduction of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the 1980s, is also presented in this chapter. Close analysis of data presented in this chapter shows that while significant progress was made to transform the colonial economy in the first decade and a half after independence. this was reversed during the 1990s when industrial policy was abandoned. Industrial production trends discussed in the chapter illustrate that as a result of the abandonment of industrial policy, the objective of transforming and diversifying the structure of the economy in Zambia (as in most African countries) has not been achieved. The chapter shows that the challenges of industrialisation in the country have persisted to the present, manifested in the fact that features of the colonial economy are still dominant today.
