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Article: Life after debt: Zambia.
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- July 1, 1995
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE story of Zambia is like one of those moral tales in which the hero, Mr Nice Guy, tries to be honest, does what he's told, backs off from fights, and still gets screwed by the wicked world. Hear Frederick Chiluba, the born-again Christian president: "We knew it was not going to be easy. There was no way we were going to reform the economy without pain." Too right.
He makes it sound as if Zambia spent a riotous youth and is now doing penance. But the policies that it pursued for nearly 30 years--import-substitution, subsidised food prices to please its largely urban population, and so on--were, at the time, respectable mainstream nationalist thinking, backed by ...