Let’s learn to harness our natural resources

ZAMBIA is not as poor as we have always been told. I say so looking at the vast natural resources the country is endowed with.

One just has to look at the mineral resources such as copper, emeralds, tin, Zinc and cobalt, among others. The problem is not that we don’t have money, the problem is that as a nation we have failed to fully harness our God-given resources for the betterment of our nation. Instead we are always looking to the outside world to do this for us and even seeking financial assistance.

For example, Government has been losing colossal sums of money through illegal mining. If such illicit activities can controlled, the money can be channelled for proper national development. But instead the state is losing out as unscrupulous people are exporting the copper in form of raw materials a popped to products. We must build capacity in the systems so that we cannot not mine our minerals but export them as finished products –value addition. We must stop moving with a begging bowl …how long can we depend on the west for help?

Let’s stop crying and seeing ourselves poor. We have money except it lies in our natural resources. What we need to do is just build our capacity to harness the natural resources and process them into exportable products. Trouble is we have been exporting raw materials from time immemorial.