Chisanga Puta-Chekwe's Interview on Zambia Blogtalkradio

Mr. Chisanga Puta-Chekwe, Ontario’s Deputy Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and Deputy Minister for Women’s Affairs, appeared on ZBTR show of 12/5/2009 and hosted by Nathan Nkhama from Dallas and Co-host Chasaya Sichilima of Ontario, Canada. The following is the interview verbatim:

Nathan: My first question is: Who is Chisanga Puta-Chekwe? Where did the journey begin? Where did you grow up and which schools did you attend?

Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: I was born in Chingola and left Chingola at a fairly early age because my parents decided to start a business in Bancroft (which is now called Chililabombwe). My first school was in Bancroft. It was called Lubengele Primary School. Actually I met a couple of lifelong friends there. And then I left Lubengele to go to Chiwale Secondary School briefly and that is where I met the late Levy Patrick Mwanawasa and my great childhood friend Arthur Bob Litana. Chiwale took me back to Chingola just before independence and I was enrolled in Chingola Primary School which at that time, reflecting the audacity of the time (I suppose), was referred to as a European School but because of an accident of geography in terms of where we lived, that is the school that my parents enrolled me in not without challenges because it was in the pre-independence era. In any event it all worked out and subsequently I spent one year at Chingola High and then I went to what is now called Kabulonga Boys’ Secondary School. When they closed the boarding houses at Kabulonga, I left and went to England where I did my O-levels and subsequently A-levels at High Wickham College. And University was Birmingham in London and Oxford. That completes my academic and childhood background.

Nathan: Mr. Puta-Chekwe has lived in Europe, in Zambia and now in Canada. I want to implore all of us to take this opportunity to learn and gleam from him as a fellow diaspora how we can engage each other and try to see how we can proceed from here. Until March 2009, you were Country Manager for First Quantum Minerals (FQM) in Zambia. How did you transition from that profession to where you are now?

Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: Well, prior to my going to Zambia to join FQM, I had been approached by a person representing the Secretary of Cabinet in Ontario. They had indicated that they had been watching my career and that they wanted to know if I might have an interest one day in serving as Deputy Minister. I answered in the affirmative. I was asked to undergo Leadership Test with a Head Hunting firm that seemed to have gone well but I wasn’t given an offer immediately. In the intervening period, I was asked to be FQM first Country Manager in Zambia. So, I left to go to Zambia but two days after signing that contract I head from the Secretary of Cabinet and they said they now had a position for me to consider but I couldn’t take it because I had first signed up with FQM. So, I went to work with FQM. After one year at FQM, my family had stayed back in Zambia and there were family issues to be resolved. I knew I had to return to Ontario. I contacted the Secretary of Cabinet to find out if there was still some interest in me serving in some capacity. Indeed, it happened that there was. Shortly before I returned, relying on the old interviews and leadership tests, I was made an offer. That is how I find myself here.

Nathan: It’s interesting how you putting it because being a Zambian, my reasoning is that you need to belong to a political party for you to take a government position. Is that the way it works or its totally different?

Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: No, that’s not the way it works Nathan. In Canada, Deputy Ministers are technocrats who in fact are the CEOs of Ministries. They are responsible for the Staff, managing relations with the Ministers. They are also responsible for supporting their ministers, policy development but they are not politicians. So, I’m not a politician.

Chasaya: I want you to help us sort of gauge where you are coming from. I know that you left Zambia for a variety of reasons but I want you to give us a sense of why you left Zambia. A lot of us was painful decision. How was it when you left Zambia, moving to Canada and how was it settling down? Off course, you have risen through the ranks to the position where you are now. What are some of the challenges you have overcome to reach where you are today?
Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: I think your question is two-fold. First, the circumstances of living Zambia and, second, how does one manage the challenges of being transplanted, being a new country and making something of one’s life. When I left Zambia, the country was a One Party State and I very quickly realized that my temperament just could not fit in with a One Party regime, particularly one as dictatorial as Mr. Kaunda’s. And indeed, I had had a run-in with Mr. Kaunda’s regime. So, when I felt I could no longer be productive, particularly in the area of human rights which had interested me, I defended a number of people in prison without trial or threatened with imprisonment. I left initially to go to England and then from there we came to Canada.

Now there are challenges of being transplanted in a new country as you suggest. One of the main challenges is simply having one’s qualifications recognized and in those days it used to take a very long time. That was way before we had the kind of British training program that my Ministry now does here in Ontario. So, what you do with your education, I think, when you find that your qualification is not immediately recognizable in your new jurisdiction, you become less reliant on the qualification but more reliant on the knowledge that you have actually acquired from your education. In other words, you start to look for other areas where you can be active and be productive and still use your education and training. On that basis, after two weeks of searching, I know it’s a short time but I’m an impatient person, I decided to simply set up a consulting business. I knocked on people’s doors and told them that I wasn’t interested in a job but was interested in assignments and they could give me an assignment which I’ll do, I’ll bill them and then get out of their hair. That’s how the Chekwe Consultancy came into being. And I did that for about 5 years until one of my clients, Criminal Injuries Compensation Board (CICB) offered me an opportunity to compete for the position of Chair of the organization, Chair and CEO. I was successful in the competition and that was the first Ontario Government agency that I led.

Chasaya: From your profile, I also notice that you were actually the Executive Director of OXFAM Canada. How did that come about and how was that experience heading a position with a not-for-profit organization countrywide?

Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: That came about because when I became Chair of CICB, the expectation was that it was going to be wound down anyway because it chronic loss-maker. It had this longstanding deficit of $1.2 million. They used to call it an overrun but it was a deficit. It wasn’t expected to last especially when the Progressive Conservative Party came into power. But, with the help of a very good team, one of whom nominated me for the sole award that I received one month ago today (December 5, 2009). With a very good team, we did manage to eliminate that deficit and we were also one of only a handful of government agencies that was able to hand back money to the government as part of the money-saving strategy. All that happened in the second fiscal year going on to third fiscal year. So, after three years, I thought my job had been done there. I would have liked to stay, it would have been nice to stay but I really thought that having cleaned, having up it on a new footing, it was time for new leadership to take-over and take it to the next level. So, I left and looked around and OXFAM Canada was looking for an Executive Director. They had just gone through their own reorganization and were moving from Secretary General of the organization to Executive Director. I threw my hat in the ring, so to speak. And again, I attended interviews organized by a Headhunting firm and was fortunate enough to be the successful candidate. That’s how I joined OXFAM Canada. In terms of the lessons from OXFAM, I think the lasting lesson for me is that, certainly there are types of aid that can work and that help people both in the South and in the North. But the kinds of aid are quite limited and certainly they should be limited in duration but also limited in sector and scope. Overall, aid in general cannot work and it certainly cannot help a country like Zambia for a number of reasons. Perhaps I’ll start with the least important reason. The least important reason is that a large number of people in the aid sector, not-for-profit aid sector, nevertheless see their work as careers. They don’t see this as short-term measure which they should. It’s a career. Some of the people that I know at OXFAM had been there for 20-30 years. There is just something wrong with that. If your aim is to uplift people and make them self sufficient, you already should be working yourself out of the job if you are in the aid industry. That was one thing that really struck me. The other example I would like to give you is this, in support of my first point, that when I was at OXFAM Canada, Eritrea adopted a policy of self-reliance and as part of that policy they decided to expel foreign Aid organizations including OXFAM Canada and OXFAM Belgium. Now, OXFAM Canada is a member of OXFAM International on which I sat on their Executive Committee of the Governing Body of OXFAM International. In response to this policy at the meeting in The Hague and it was decided that a fact-finding mission should be sent to Eritrea and that fact finding mission consisted of me as Head of OXFAM Canada and a gentlemen called Stefan de Clark who then was Head of OXFAM Belgium. So, we went to Eritrea and I remember the meeting very very well and it was extremely tense when you walked into a room, you could almost hear the thoughts of the people around the table, the Eritreans thinking “here comes the imperialists trying to limit our independence again”. So, they were quite surprised and there was a sudden drop in temperature when I said, look, that speaking for myself, I think Eritrea should be doing exactly what it is doing by adopting this policy of self-reliance. My friend from Belgium, Stefan de Clark, looked at the delegation and said I support my friend from Canada entirely that you should be self-reliant. The whole tone of the conversation changed and Eritrea was now saying that may be in future you can come back so that we can have a more respectful and more collaborative relationship and so on and so forth. But when we returned, he to Belgium and I to Canada, there was so much resistance from our colleagues around the world, the Heads of OXFAM. There was resistance from NOVIB (the Dutch OXFAM), there was resistance from the UK, and resistance even from Ireland which we should have known better. And, in the end, Eritrea was pressured and they sort of abandoned that policy, which I think was a pity. But, the point I’m trying to make is this: aid is not going to make anyone self-reliant and I think it’s folly, unwise to rely on foreigners for one’s development. I don’t see how countries like Zambia can rely on the USA, Canada, the UK or anybody else for its development especially when you look at Zambia’s history with these countries.

Patrick Mapalo (Albuquerque, New Mexico): It’s good to see Zambians in the diaspora doing so well. What an encouragement you are! Bringing you back to impact and effect of donor fund, Dambisa Moyo, our renown economist, in her book “Dead Aid”, explains why Africa Aid is not a solution to be helped and we see that partnering with multi-national corporations and governments and according to Dambisa, she says, in the past 50 years, more than $1 trillion in development related Aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates have steadily declined and millions continue to suffer in comparison to Asian countries that have rejected Aid and prospered. Examples are Malaysia and Singapore that are doing well now. What should African governments do especially countries like Zambia? What should be the solution to get away from this aid mentality and begin to develop our own resources?


Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: I don’t think Dambisa says Asian countries rejected aid. The distinction that she does draw is a similar distinction that she draws between the Marshall Plan that benefited post-war German and the kind of Aid that we get. The point that Dambisa is making is that if you are going to have aid, certainly there are emergency situations that may require foreign countries to assist and give aid. But the aid must be limited in duration. It must be for a specific purpose and it must be consistent with their long-term development objectives of the country where the aid is going. I would add a fourth point which is that the country must take ownership of the development agenda. We have not done that in Zambia. I will also briefly mention the other dangers of Aid. One: It fuels corruption for the simple reason that there is no accountability with respect to aid. The money is not coming from your local taxpayers. So, there is no obligation to feel accountable to the taxpayers, it’s coming from an abstract thing called donors. Two: It also fuels inflation because what sometimes happens is that when you get cash injected into an economy, it exaggerates the country’s capacity to consume goods and services made locally and abroad. So, it artificially increases demand for goods and services. In other words, you have too much money chasing too few goods and that of course is a classic definition of inflation. There is also something else that it does to recipient countries; it encourages them to have low self-esteem because everybody looks down on them because they are recipients. They are seen as people who produce nothing and are dependent on others for their well-being. For those reasons, I very much agree with Dambisa Moyo although I would go further in terms of when you actually cut this aid. This should be a national priority for Zambia. When do we stop this business of being dependent on foreigners? Now, in terms of what do you do? The very first thing for Zambia to do, I think, is to have a very strong group consisting of business people, members of the Diaspora, civil society in Zambia and some government representatives but it should not be government-driven. This should be citizen-driven with leadership being provided by the groups I have mentioned. The purpose of that group would be to determine the best way and the quickest way of ending aid. My sense is that whatever recommendations the group comes up with; there are certain things that are inevitable. One is to build up the local economy; you cannot be a member of the global economy without having a domestic economy. We practically have our domestic economy now consists of extraction of minerals and the export of those minerals on terms determined by non-Zambians. That’s not much of a domestic economy. We need to have a real domestic economy in which all the people of Zambia, not just elite but all the people of Zambia participate and the population itself is telling us something along these lines. Look at the furniture that is made in Zambia; it’s sold on roadsides, usually in violation of zoning laws. What we should learn from that is that there is manufacturing capacity in Zambia as evidenced by the excellent furniture that people make and most of these people do not have training. So, what do you do? First, find them a proper market for that product. For example, you could take a building in Lusaka or Ndola or Kitwe, well located, renovate it and have it as display (Showroom) and sales center for the furniture so that anyone who makes furniture, as long as it meets standards set by the Zambia Bureau of Standards (ZBS) in Zambia or furniture industry in Zambia, anyone who makes furniture can take their furniture to this place where it will be displayed and when that piece of furniture is sold, the maker of the furniture will be given the sale profit less a percentage for display services because it has been displayed at this particular place. What that will do is that it will take furniture off the street and make it easier for local authorities to enforce their by-laws relating to illegal trading and so on. But, second, it puts the manufacturers of furniture who are on the fringe of society now into the formal economy. It formalizes their functions and will also be other effects which will include transportation because people can no longer sell furniture on the streets, they now have an outlet. They will need someone to collect that furniture from the places where it’s made to this outlet. So, the transportation industry will develop and someone will find a job out of that. The principle here is that let us make as much as possible in Zambia and sell as much as possible to our own people. Now, how does government play a role in this? I will go back to a point I have been making now for the past 10 years which is this, the Zambia government, as a matter of policy, should say, from a given date, it could be for argument sake it could be from April 1, 2010, the Zambian government will not consume anything that has no Zambian content. For example, the Zambian government buys about 9,000-10,000 vehicles every year, if they were to say that, immediately a market will be created for a manufacture of motor vehicles and what that would do, from the experience gained at the Livingstone Motor Assembler or Rover Zambia in Ndola will come into play once again and car manufacturers realizing that their biggest customer in the country is no longer prepared to buy foreign cars, will build plants or a plant in Zambia to manufacture the 9,000 motor vehicles that are needed by the government. But, because they are already in Zambia, they go will go beyond that and start manufacturing for the rest of the population as well. But, let us assume they only manufacture instantly or immediately for the Zambian government, one motor vehicle in general terms where you have very good technology it will take three people to make one motor vehicle. Let us assume that we have very good technology in Zambia and if you assemble 9 vehicles, it means you are putting 27,000 people into the job market at a stroke and of course if you don’t have very good technology, the number of people getting into a job market will even be larger than that. Now, multiply that by over the number of sectors that offer opportunities for these kinds innovations, you could do that with respect to desks in schools. We know that the capacity to manufacture desks exists in Zambia and yet no-one has thought of going to these manufacturers and saying that your task is going to be manufacturing desks for Chifubu in Ndola, and you, Mr. Banda, are going to supply desks to Chiwempala in Chingola and you, Mr. Mulenga, will supply desks for the whole of Livingstone in the Southern Province and so forth. Imagine how many jobs will be generated from that policy. So, to summarize; one: let us get away from aid as quickly as possible; two: let us make a concerted effort to create a vibrant domestic economy that involves everyone.

Nathan Nkhama: Your profile indicates that you’ve worked in Zambia in different capacities. Looking at it from the perspective of where you are now in the Diaspora, not necessarily that this is the only time you have been in the Diaspora, you have been in the Diaspora for a very long time. Why do get the notion, most people think that the only way to go and make change back home is to go and get involved politically. What would you comment on that?
Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: I think most people take that viewpoint because politics has dominated everything in Zambia since the early mid 1970s’ when the One Party State came into being. Although there have been attempts at reform, we nevertheless continue to have One party political structure. We have a constitution that gives too much power, in my view, to the executive branch of government and conversely gives too little power to the peoples’ representatives’ which is the National Assembly. Because of the dominance of the government in the economic, political and social arena, because of all these factors the private sector almost provides at the mercy of the public sector and it’s this realization that encourages people to believe that if they going to make meaningful changes they had better to go into the political arena. For example, how else do you reduce the power of the president; you have to actually believe that presidential power should be reduced vis-à-vis the legislature. The current incumbent or any of these predecessors will not do that. So, this is why people, I think, are tempted to go into politics. Nevertheless, I do take a different view of your implied point which is we would be better off if more and more people aspire to go into the private sector to actually make things, to trade, sell services and goods to add value. That is true and I think we should certainly do everything to encourage people to go into the private sector and try to make a difference. For the record, I have never been in politics in Zambia. I have always been in private sector. I have never worked in the public sector before.

Nathan Nkama: Could you just mention five top or major areas you would recommend the diaspora to go and invest in Zambia?

Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: The agro-business is a good area to go into and it can be done at several levels. There is a obvious level of simply farming, harvesting and selling the produce. But there is also something else that is very interesting that happens in Zambia. During the worst drought or typically when Zambia has a drought, the situation is anyone who has driven from the Chingola to Lusaka will testify to this. It is not unusual to see bags and bags of potatoes, both Irish and sweet potatoes, increasingly more Irish than sweet potatoes along the road just begging for buyers. So, there is a surplus of food. But there will be very little food in the Southern Province. At the same time you would have fruit rotting in Luapula province because it cannot get to the market. So, one obvious area would be food processing i.e. you buy this food, let’s say you bought the potatoes, there are a number of things you can do with that. You can turn it into chips whether it’s Irish potatoes or sweet potatoes and package so that it is available for consumption both in-season and out-of- season. You can do that with a number of things; fruit can be turned into juice and so forth. Food processing is even important business that I would go into but at the same time there is a role for government, if you are going to develop that sector of the economy, government has to make sure that the local entrepreneurs in that business are not being undermined by cheap imports from sweatshops. That means imported finished products must be properly priced. In other words, there is a place for tariffs on imported goods especially for a developing country. The other area stems from an example I gave you earlier of what could happen if government adopted a policy of not consuming anything that had no Zambia content. With that policy could come an additional policy which is, within a certain number of years, you would expect the number of motor vehicles manufactured in Zambia to have, say, 20% Zambian content. What that would do is to send a very important message to the market and the message would be this: look into the possibility of manufacturing things as simple as wipers or car tyres and the reason people would go into that business is that they would know that they would count or they would have a bottom-line and that they would count on a market of 9,000 motor vehicles, possibly more. But 9,000 is a basic market and two wipers per motor vehicle that is 18,000 wipers per year and that would be a good small to medium size business. The same thing would be true of tyres and of course the multiplier effect of this is that you are going to other areas as well. The third one would be telecommunication. We are a growing economy in terms of cell phone usage, for example, but nobody manufactures cell phones in Zambia. But again a certain amount of protectionism would start and that you would expect business to grow. But alongside that, you need to make sure that the tariffs; the cost of calling in Zambia is competitive. Zambia is one of the most expensive places to call and also to call out of. That’s something that can be changed. Construction is an obvious one but again is another example. But, again, there is role for government. Why is it that we instinctively think of foreigners when we plan on building a road? If you want to build a new road from Livingstone to Chililabombwe, why not space it out? One portion is done by one company with maximum local employment until you go on reach Chililabombwe. What is required to build a road? You need Quantity Surveyors. But apart from that, what are the raw materials that you need? Bitumen, stones and lots of labour, all of which are available in Zambia. I would say that construction should not be ignored either. Lastly, it is a combination of private enterprise and good public policy. We have got very good silica in Zambia around Kapiri Mposhi, why don’t we manufacture computers? And what we could do with that is that if Zambia does something that president Mwanawasa wanted to do, unfortunately the bureaucracy was so slow they let him down that eventually the person who had been appointed to spearhead that exercise in Canada died waiting for his mandate. That’s how inefficient we can be. But here is what was going to happen, Zambia was going to enter into a free trade agreement with Canada and one of the first things that was going to happen under that trade agreement was the establishment of a computer assembly plant just outside Ndola because Ndola needed a boost, an injection on investment to keep it going. It was going to be either in Ndola or near the airport in Lusaka. My preference was Ndola. The idea was, initially this was going to be an assembly plant and only silica was going to be used locally. But, the computers were going to be sold at home and also in Canada. Given the existence of the free Trade agreement, the computers would have entered Canada duty free and the estimate at the time was that a desktop that cost $1,600 was going to land in Canada at $600 because of cheap Zambian labour. A Zambian computer was going to be exceedingly competitive. This would have introduced many more people into technological era and this would have increased income to Zambia and increased the wealth of the country. Of course the other side of the coin is that we would have fewer unemployed people and less crime. These are areas that one can go into. A further area that we need to look at; it’s tourism. Despite the successes of Livingstone in recent years, we’ve got a along way to go in the area of tourism and in terms policy we should be looking at a country like Canada. Canadians spend about $35-40 billion a year on travel to countries that have less to offer than Zambia. Our strategy should be to attract at least 10% of that market, make sure that it goes to Zambia. If we did that, that would be an injection into our national economy of $3-4 billion a year. This will be comparable to what we earn from copper, just a bit below what we earn from copper. But, imagine what it would do to the country, you are practically doubling the income of the country just by this one move. That’s a very important area to look at as well.

Victor Kunda Mwaba (Birmingham, Alabama): My question for Mr. Puta-Chekwe concerns the influence of the Chinese in Zambia specifically to the mining sector. Obviously, we read a lot not only in the local papers in Zambia concerning a lot of mine accidents both in China and as well as in Zambia. Does the Zambian government have enough capacity to protect its people on health and safety hazards especially in mining sector? Secondly, compensation, not too long ago, the workers at Maamba Collieries went on strike because the Chinese companies are paying the workers as low as ZMK200,000 per month and in addition to that there are allegations that they are employing children in those mines. Does the Zambian government have any say in how much can be paid to its people or do the Chinese just come in and say today we are going to make this mine and we will pay these people ZMK200,000, next year we are going to pay them ZMK1 million and the following year ZMK 100,000? Why do they fluctuate so much in their pay?

Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: First of all, I’m glad that you recognized that the safety issues in Chinese mines are not peculiar to Zambia, they are also quite an issue in China itself. My sense is that the standard of mining is not very high in China and in Zambia we have a history of mining and safety is very important and there are certain skills that can ensure that mines are operated safely. For example, there is a mine in Solwezi which in 2008, throughout the year they did not have a single injury from an accident or any mis-hap on the mine. They had 365 days without a injury. What the Chinese mines can do as well is that; there are two ways of tackling the poor safety records on Chinese mines. One is obviously through legislation. But, I think you do want to avoid legislation for every problem that arises in society. The other one is showcase the good mines and shame the bad ones and they will very quickly learn that it doesn’t pay to have poor working conditions. If that fails, of course, you resort to legislation. In terms of safety, the safety record of Chinese mines in Zambia is a concern and certainly should be addressed. We shouldn’t simply sit back whether it’s a Chamber of Mines or the government of Zambia. With respect to compensation, I think that there are existing companies in Zambia that have compensation levels that will determine what the minimum level of compensation is. And I don’t think it is a difficult thing to bring pressure to bear on the Chinese companies and say to them that you’d better follow this mode of compensation when you are operating in Zambia. We should remember that this is not a one way street. The Chinese employ Zambian nationals but the Chinese also get a great deal from our mines. It is Zambian copper that helps to fuel the Chinese economy. I would have thought it would be in the Chinese interest to have a good corporate record in Zambia, make sure that people are adequately compensated and certainly make sure that they are not employing children. Now, with respect to the children, we have a human rights commissioner in Zambia. They can do something about this.

Chasaya Sichilima: Deputy Minister, I know that when you were in Zambia one of the things that you have done, passionately, was to talk about the Diaspora agenda and push for the issue of dual citizenship. Now that evidently that is going to be done in the NCC, the new constitution coming up and there is also a Diaspora desk at State House, what do we in the Diaspora, need to do and focus on so that we are not seen as people who ask for so much and yet cannot deliver?
Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: Well, I don’t think that members of the Zambian Diaspora ask for very much, actually. I think you have been quite mute, certainly in comparison to other Diasporas who have delivered. Of course, we can deliver. You are aware that, for example, the Masomo Education Foundation was born in Canada and it benefits Zambians going to institutions of higher learning. In short, Masomo has been granting scholarships for only 2 years and we’ve already got six students chosen on merit attending a number of colleges including the University of Zambia at home. That example alone should tell us that there is a great deal the Diaspora can do for Zambia but we need to be engaged the responsibility of the government and fellow nationals at home is to see us as an asset rather than as a threat or a group of people who have abandoned their homeland. There is a great deal that we can do. Look at other diasporas; Irish Diaspora, Portuguese Diaspora, the Ghanaian Diaspora, Nigerian Diaspora; there is a school in Eastern Nigeria, a high cost, well constructed school and very well equipped and was funded from Ontario by the Nigerian Diaspora. Look at the boom in Ghana which continues the construction boom. Ghana is one of only a handful of countries which did not suffer collapse in the banking system. Not single bank collapsed in Ghana when this current recession started. One of the reasons for that is that it’s Diaspora in 2002, Ghanaians living abroad remitted $400 million home. That year dual nationality was allowed and within 24 months the remittances more than doubled and they have been increasing ever since so that by the end of 2007, Ghanaians sent home $8 billion. That’s a huge amount of money. Now, why did that happen? That happened because the introduction of dual nationality sent a very powerful message to Ghanaians living abroad. Those who had left and assumed they would never go back as citizens of new countries, suddenly realized that it may be possible to retire back home. So, they started sending money home for their retirement. Those who had left but not acquired new citizenship because they feared losing their old citizenship could now do so. And, because they could now do so, they were able to get better paying jobs by being new citizens of the countries where they were. They increased their remittances to Ghana. In summary, I think that in the modern economy dual nationality for Zambia is not only desirable but imperative. It is something that is going to benefit members of the Diaspora to some extent but primarily the benefit will go to Zambia the country.

Dr. Kaela Mulenga: We are very proud and happy that our brother Chisanga Puta-Chekwe has been recognized here in Canada. Not that we are proud and happy about that I hope it will send messages back home that there is a pool in the diaspora of competent human resource which the country can use. I believe that the people at home haven’t quite, in my opinion, recognized that fact that a lot of people who have been educated at the expense of Zambia are scattered around the world. If the government at home really looked seriously, they can tap into that human resource but that’s the point I had to make. The second point is that in principle I do agree with Chisanga Puta-Chekwe his articulation of his economic development that we could contribute to development, there is no dispute about that but I think that if we had someone like him in plot one perhaps we could have a different or possible outcome. It’s high time we have some who knows and can articulate policies that can help that country and that would be very nice. However, when it comes to deal with aid, it’s a very touchy issue. I think I’m one of the few people who found some kind of potholes in Dambisa Moyo’s premise. One of the biggest weaknesses which I think is the fact that she is recommending when to stop aid. Let’s assume you don’t aid coming from outside, what do you have in place? What she is suggesting is that a private sector can jump in. One of the examples she uses is the use of bonds but what do you think of that alternative? To me, firstly I think Africa is not ready and it’s just a tactic which companies like Goldman Sachs where Dambisa has been working is strategizing for the future. I would like Chisanga Puta-Chekwe to comment on that.

Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: First of all, there already some African countries that use bonds. One of them is South Africa, Namibia uses them to a less extent. Ghana has used them to a less extent. The value of bonds is that the person issuing bonds and the person buying bonds both have an interesting in it’s success and I think Dambisa makes this point very well. It also reduces the chances of corruption because you can not misuse bond money. At the very most you can misuse bond money once. But once you have that reputation, you don’t participate in the market anymore. Let me give you an example of how it could work in Zambia. Let us assume for example that we wanted to build a parallel road to the existing one from Livingstone to Chililabombwe, I gave you one method we could use it just involving local resources. But, we could go to Japan and say we want to build this road, we need to raise $X million dollars and we are issuing a ten year bond, so give us your money. Anyone who thinks that could be profitable as a toll road, people pay to use it, would participate in that bond. There is nothing sinister about that, it’s simply judgment that people make. Similarly, if you want to build a railway line you could do the same thing. But, Dr. Mulenga is correct in saying that the issuance of bonds is not a panacea. At the end of the day, we have to have a strong local economy so that we can accommodate different methods of raising foreign money. Bond market is unreliable; we have got to have a strong local economy to fall back on. So, you have to think of alternatives. We must not get aid which is perceived as money. And, we are already in the area of free money and we must learn to ask basic questions. Why is anyone giving us aid at all. For example, I think my American listeners will agree that we have got 4 million children living in absolute poverty in the USA, and when a US Aid agency or government says that they want to alleviate child poverty in Zambia, we should ask ourselves the questions that “why are they so concerned about the 1.5 million children or so who live in poverty in Zambia? Why aren’t they doing the same thing for their won children? Perhaps there is an agenda that we are not seeing. And in asking that question, we should bear certain facts in mind such as, for every dollar on so-called aid that the US spends in a country like Zambia they get back $1.02. Who is aiding who? Even countries with a record of generosity like Canada and the Scandinavian countries, Canada gets about 97 cents and the Scandinavian countries get back about 85 cents. At the very least we can say that the money that is spent not all of it benefits the country. In some instances, the country pays for that aid. And while I’m talking about this let me give you an example that I came across during my days as an international development consultant. I was asked to look at a project involving Tanzania. The Canadian government had announced that they had $5 million to give to a qualifying country and of course African countries were falling over each other to get that money. In the end Tanzania “won”. They won mostly because of the relationship that Pierre Trudeau and Julius Nyerere had established. They were very close friends, both intellectuals, so they had something in common. In any event the Tanzanians “won” this particular bid. Tanzania, in those days of telexes telexed the Canadian government that this is our bank account, put the check there, it was a $5 million dollar grant? The Canadian Government said No, this is a commodity aid so you have to choose between wheat and fertilizer. I’ll tell why they had to choose between those two commodities. That year, Canada had over-produced both wheat and fertilizer. So, there was a huge surplus, a huge mountain of wheat and a mountain of fertilizer. The Tanzanians chose wheat. They then telexed back and said arrange for transportation to Halifax, we have got a ship in the vicinity, East African shipping line that transport the cargo. The telexed that went back said No, this is a tied aid, you have to use a Canadian shipping line. Tanzania had to fork-out hard currency. In those days they had exchange control in Tanzania. They had to fork-out hard currency to pay for the shipping line. They then said we are insuring the cargo with East Africa Insurance Corporation. Another telex goes back and says No, you cannot do that, you have to use a Canadian insurance company. So, again Tanzania paid out in hard currency for this $5 million grant. The ship went to Dar-res-Salaam, when it docked the Tanzanian government said thank you very much for the wheat. The Canadians said, well, not so fast, the aid was in dollars but you have Tanzanian shillings so you have to pay the equivalent in Tanzanian Shillings. And the money that they paid in Tanzanian shillings was then managed by a committee called a Counterpart Fund Committee consisting of Tanzanians and Canadians. And this fund is used largely to build infrastructure. And law and behold, 6 months later that money was used to build a new road in Tanzania which was built as new Canadian aid to Tanzania to support the road infrastructure. I think that story quite demonstrates that there is something quite illusory about this aid which we talk about so much that may help answer the previous caller who said a trillion dollar in aid to went to the continent but there is nothing to show for. Well, it is $1 trillion dollars made of $5 million bits such as the one I have just described.

Rodger Chali (Alberta, Canada): I also want to direct you in the area of Diaspora. We are looking for people like you in high offices who can help us to rebuild our Zambia through the work of the Diaspora. How is your availability to be part of the team that is working on the issues of Diaspora? It takes a lot of discipline to work in government here in Canada: “What have you been doing may be to export some of that discipline back home with our permanent secretaries as it were?

Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: Thanlk you very much for that question. In terms of availability, I think that those who know me will agree that I’ll do whatever it takes to be of assistance to our Diaspora. And, I suspect one of the people who might agree with me is Chasaya Sichilima. Of course I’m available but my time is limited. But Diaspora-Zambian relations are priority and I would really love to see us have more influence on people at home. Whether or not we have any influence is another matter and it relates to the second part of your question, discipline. I think everybody knows that you need to have a huge amount of discipline to do a good job. But I have made the sad discovery that the chaos we see in Zambia, the corruption benefits somebody. In other words, there are people with vested interest in the current system. Even if we go to Zambia with models of how we could make government more efficient, public servants more disciplined, all public players more disciplined, there would be resistance. This goes back to an earlier question put to me “why do so many people in the Diaspora want to go in politics? And, the reason is, there would be resistance because there is no leadership to accept the ideas, even the common sense ideas that we have because someone has a vested interest in this and the people with the vested interest are quite high up on the leadership ladder in Zambia.

Titus Natala (St. Paul, Minnesota): What would be your comment on countries like Kenya that I’m told have resorted to handing back the luxurious cars that the ministers have from GXs’ to VW Jetta because of the economic situation. You being in Canadian government, do you see any stringent measures that you can advise the Zambian government? We just had a brand new Mercedes Benz for RB two weeks ago.

Deputy Minister Chisanga Puta-Chekwe: I think that’s an excellent question. First of all, a culture has developed and this culture has come at the same time that there has been an increase in foreign aid. A culture has developed that leaders in government can have all sorts of perks that aren’t available to the general public. And many of these perks are frankly quite unreasonable. I don’t see why every single Cabinet Minister, even parliamentarians, should drive a Mercedes Benz car. I don’t see why our Cabinet Ministers in Zambia should each have three motor vehicles with an assigned driver. That is hellishly expensive. A country cannot afford it but we tolerate it because there is a belief that these cars are paid by somebody else other than the Zambian national. Because we have so few people in the formal sector, very few Zambians connect themselves or connect their pockets to government expenditure. So this kind of behaviour allows to go unchecked and it becomes more and more egregious at times and that is totally unacceptable. Let me give an example, Canada, I think we all agree, is a wealthier country than Zambia and yet a Deputy Minister or Cabinet Minister when he or she is travelling will be picked by a driver using a pool car to travel on government business. There is no personal to holder official car, so why should we have it Zambia? For example, we are having a Christmas party for my staff and it’s going to be financed from my pocket and from the minister’s pocket. There is no reason why the Ontario taxpayers should be paying for a party for my staff when I want to thank them and these are the kinds of ideas and culture we should be taking at home. I would to thank you for those questions and think that’s the kind of thinking we should be taking home. The idea that we are a poor country is a myth in Zambia. We are certainly poorly managed but we are not a poor country and we are poorly managed because of this kind of waste by people who should know better.