Zambia

Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa, and also is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbors are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the northeast, Malawi to the east, Mozambique to the southeast, Zimbabwe and Botswana to the south, Namibia to the southwest, and Angola to the west. The capital city of Zambia is Lusaka, located in the south-central part of Zambia. The population is concentrated mainly around Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt Province to the north, the economic hubs of the country. Originally inhabited by Khoisan peoples, the region was affected by the Bantu expansion of the 13th century. Following European explorers in the 18th century, the British colonised the region into the British protectorates of Barotseland-North-Western Rhodesia and North-Eastern Rhodesia comprising 73 tribes, towards the 19th century. These were merged in 1911 to form Northern Rhodesia. For most of the colonial period, it was governed by an administration appointed from London with the advice of the British South Africa Company. On 24 October 1964, Zambia became independent of the United Kingdom and prime minister Kenneth Kaunda became the inaugural president. Kaunda's socialist United National Independence Party (UNIP) maintained power from 1964 until 1991. Kaunda played a role in regional diplomacy, cooperating with the United States in search of solutions to conflicts in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Angola, and Namibia. From 1972 to 1991 Zambia was a one-party state with UNIP as the sole legal political party under the motto "One Zambia, One Nation" coined by Kaunda. Kaunda was succeeded by Frederick Chiluba of the social-democratic Movement for Multi-Party Democracy in 1991, beginning a period of government decentralisation. There are minerals, wildlife, forestry, freshwater and arable land. In 2010, the World Bank named Zambia "one of the world's fastest economically reformed countries". The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) is headquartered in Lusaka.