42
Innovators
That will definitely make a difference. The road sec-
tor will help increase the building sector because
more people will think of building shops, and other
physical infrastructure in place to make their money
in the rural areas,
The main challenge in the road development is the
funding. There are a lot of road construction pro-
jects going on at the moment, and they could pos-
sibly be completed quicker if we had more funding
from the government.
Investment opportunities in the road are private
partnership initiatives. Through public-private sec-
tor partnerships (PPP) there is a huge potential in
the country right now.
There lies a huge opportunity to take away the bur-
den from government for paying for these roads
and take that into the private sector.
Coul
d y
ou g
iv
e some more back
g
round Safricas
Zambia as a company
?
Safricas Zambia is evidence of the government’s
policy of
more money in your pocket.’ Part of the
whole reason why government started the whole
road infrastructure project was to economically em-
power the Zambian people, so that they have more
money in their pockets.
Safricas Zambia is a good example of this working.
It started off by partnering with a foreign company,
and over a period of time, it acquired shares from
the foreign owner and gaining the majority share-
holding, and now it became a Zambian registered
company.
This now creates a new middle class within Zam-
bia. It also creates within the country the capacity
to do our own roads as Zambia.
Do y
ou think
Zambia coul
d be abl
e to transfer
its set of sk
il
l
s to the rest of the reg
ion?
Yes, it is possible. Although we operate in Zambia,
we always look for business opportunities outside
Zambia as well.
It creates a new entrepreneurship spirit within the
country and therefore you have a larger layer of
construction companies, and below that you have
other companies that are working for the bigger
companies (the sub-contractors). Under the sub-
contractor policies of government, the sub-contrac-
tors have got to be Zambian as well. That way you
find that a project like the one I am undertaking in
Lusaka will have something like 300 people emplo-
yed on the project. So there is genuine employment
being created and this is benefiting the communi-
ties.
It is an opportunity for business people to come and
make some money by coming forth to fund these
projects. What I think is the real challenge is that
of skilled manpower. We have a huge challenge in
this area in the country- we do not just have enough
civil engineers to carry out the project that we need
to do.
How
do y
ou handl
e this specific chal
l
eng
e?
It is extremely difficult and I do not think that uni-
versities produce enough skilled engineers and this
is compounded by the brain drain, which has been
going on for a long time in this country. Many of
the engineers who have been trained in the country
have since left to go and work in other countries
and they have not yet returned.
There is a gap in terms of skilled and experienced
civil engineers – we only have a handful of engi-
neers who cannot meet the demands for the sector.
Therefore, many expatriate engineers are hired to
come and carry the work. This defeats the whole
essence of government spending about 17 per cent
of its GDP on roads, which was to benefit Zam-
bians, but what this means is that this is being taken
up by the foreigners.
A typical tender document for a road project will
require at least four to five experienced engineers
and it is so difficult to find them.
The other challenge is foreign exchange fluctua-
tions; this really hits our sector very hard. Most of
our materials are bought from outside the country.
Bitumen is the most expensive product and needs
to be imported to Zambia. Every time when the
kwacha depreciates, the roads become more ex-
pensive to build.
I think it is time that some investors put up a refinery
in order to locally make bitumen here in Zambia.
So, these are all opportunities for people to take up.
