Zambia’s Urban Areas

By Paul Makasa

Urbanism, urbanisation and the modernising influence penetrated Zambia through two routes that dovetailed faith with economic enterprise – through missionaries and the mercantile capitalism of the British South Africa Company and the African Lakes Company. These enterprises exploited, administered, transported and defended the mineral endowments of the territory.

Christianity arrived from two directions – from the south into Bulozi and the north sweeping southwards to the shores of Lake Tanganyika through Ujiji. It was driven by the desire to spread faith, but conflicts with East African Arab slave traders forced a route change to Quelimane up the Shire through Lake Malawi and along the Stephenson Road to Lake Tanganyika.

Given Zambia’s developmental direction, these routes have had mixed fortunes. The infrastructure meant to penetrate the interior eventually structured the urban settlement patterns. The southern route and the railway became strong urban structuring elements. Strung along like beads on a string from Livingstone to Chililabombwe, they attracted the capital city, large-scale mining and industrial cities and consequently the population. The Stephenson Road route, on the other hand, dwindled into a ribbon of insignificant settlements, still slumbering at best, while other towns scattered around the landscape are mainly administrative.

Due to the country’s mineral endowments, mining has long driven Zambia’s economy, leaving in its wake challenges including solid, liquid, smoke and noise pollution as well as disease. Numerous strategies have been formulated to ameliorate this, but with little tangible progress.

Zambia’s Urban Areas provokes readers into debating concepts around the future of the country’s urban areas and the engines of its economic development.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Makasa
• Release date: Jul 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005100087

Book preview

Zambia’s Urban Areas

Zambia’s Urban Areas

Paul Makasa

Copyright © 2022 Paul Makasa

First edition 2022

Published by Paul Makasa Publishing at Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Paul Makasa using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Edited by Francois Rabe for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.org

E-mail: [e-mail]

Paul Makasa

[e-mail]

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my late grandfather, His Royal Highness Chuma Ng’anga, Mr Japhet Mweshi Ng’andu, Senior Chief Makasa VIII (15 June 1929 – 5 April 2021). I was privileged to spend the entire February 2021 with him. I left his palace on the 1st of March and spoke to him on the morning of 5 April, only for him to pass on around 21h00. This great man always encouraged me to write about the history of the Bemba and to correct the distortion created by many authors.

Unfortunately, without his guidance, this won’t be possible.

I also dedicate this book to my late sister, Angela Kasonde Makasa, Bana Mukuka (29 June 1953 – 4 June 2021) and to my late wife, Prisca Chowa Mutale Makasa, Bana Kasonde (3 December 1968 – 25 May 2014).

Mwende ulufwile ing’ombe bonse. Twalomba abatakatifu bakwa Lesa bonse ukweba ati, ‘bamitungulule mu nyendo shenu’, naba malaika ba mfumu nabo twati, ‘bamufishe uko muleya’.

Naifwe bene tuli fye panuma.

Ne Chambeshi twaleyabuka fye bonse pamo.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

1 - Introduction

2 - Fundamental Factors of Urban Growth and Theories of Urban Structure

3 - The Genesis of Zambia’s Urban Development

4 - Characteristics and Structure of Zambia’s Urban Areas

5 - Zambia’s Current Urban Situation

6 - Making Zambia’s Cities More Competitive

7 - Conclusions

References

Back to Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

This book is not an end in itself, but rather the beginning. In future I would like to use each of the cities and towns covered here to produce an individual book to understand how each one has developed.

In writing, I received help from Lionel Mangwende, who reproduced some diagrams. For any flaws that may be apparent, I assume full responsibility and – if informed – will rectify them in the next edition. This notwithstanding, I have ensured that this book will be relevant to students, lecturers, politicians, policymakers and everyone who may use it.

Ubi solum dare aquilae habitare – to dwell only where eagles dare

Back to Table of Contents

1 - Introduction

1.0 Introduction

While reading this book on Zambia’s urban areas, it may be conceivable that you are sitting in or are using a product of an urban process, such as a bus, a library, electricity, browsing on an electronic gadget of sorts, not to mention the book itself. Urbanism is all around us. Right now, humanity is living through a dramatic worldwide transformation. In fact, around 2008, the world’s population crossed the threshold where more than half of all people lived in urban areas. This milestone means that, for the first time in the history of Earth, more people live in an urbanised world.

The significance of this for urban areas, town planners and city managers is that, in a nutshell, there were now more humans living in a built-up area than in a natural environment. Furthermore, the largest component of this population is poor and solely dependent on what they can eke out of nature. Ironically, while expected to support an ever-increasing built environment, the natural environment continues to shrink. Urban managers therefore have to grapple with even bigger and more challenging issues related to managing expanding and problematic urban areas with limited and shrinking resources.

To illuminate and shed some light on issues facing transitional economies of sub-Saharan Africa, this book covers the genesis and evolution of urban life in general and of selected Zambian cities in particular. It looks at the development of cities around the world networked by migration, communication, trade and competition. It factors in the dynamics of economic restructuring and the fascinating ‘re-sorting’ that goes on in all urban areas and regions. It borrows theories developed and tested at international level and relates them to the local level. This way, globally generated ideas are used to interpret local phenomena and to enrich this book, which is in essence a study of urban places, central to urban studies.

Cognisance is taken of the fact that urban areas have since their inception been important in the distribution and resettlement of populations, and in the organisation and exchange of economic production. In earlier times, cities were often seen as centres of unproductive consumption, and there was much talk of the problems associated with urban bias and over-urbanisation. Currently, urban growth is seen as vital for economic growth and social development. This is because cities add value to rural products, provide services to regional markets, and attract manufacturing and service investments. Higher levels of urbanisation are associated with higher levels of GNP per capita, higher female participation rates and higher levels of education and skill.

Cities are the main trigger points for innovation. Consequently, they are now recognised as engines for growth and incubators of complex social structures and civilisations. After noticing socio-economic, technical, political and structural changes accompanying developments in spatial form, sub-fields of different social science disciplines were established in the decades after the Second World War (WWII). This was with a view to studying and integrating these separate components under the umbrella title of ‘urban studies.’ Urban study amalgamates many social sciences in its endeavour to understand and interpret different aspects of the world’s urban structures.

At global level, it was envisaged that in the colonisation and formation of urban areas, towns would be centres of trade and defence, accompanied by a civilising influence that was better enhanced by the spatial form they took. The shift from pre-industrial agricultural cities to pre-modern industrial ones resulted from industrialisation movements which induced a dominating paradigm based on the urban developmental process in the 19th century. This situation formed a pre-modern system shaped by conventional philosophy and comprehensive planning approaches in classical urban planning. The theories and practices of urban transformation concentrated on urban development and change as a unified entity to foster, configure and systematise orderly urbanisation processes at organisational and spatial levels.

1.1 Origins of cities and the genesis of urban life

Origins of cities

Different urban settlements started and developed at different times, at different rates and for different purposes. Besussi et al. (2010) explain that cities emerge and evolve from the coalescence and symbiotic interaction of infrastructures, people and economic activities. These interactions are systematic because they are related to developments in the global economy. More specifically, they manifest in building and transport technologies. In addition, these interactions are also sensitive to local context in that settlements are individually resilient to constraints in their evolutionary path. Given advances in technology, and the sheer scale and pace of contemporary urban growth, the most rapid changes in urban form, pattern and structure are taking place where historical roots are weakest. This is seen in the new suburbs of long-established Western cities, or in the new cities of developing countries.

The first towns developed mainly at places where people came together – at river crossings, harbours and oases, and at places which were easily defensible. The greatest early civilisations were founded near great rivers which flooded their banks, covering the land with rich soils from the mountains and enabling farmers to grow more food than they could eat themselves. From the surplus, farmers were able to pay craftsmen with food or money to make tools and other items they needed. Artisans, who were good at making things, traders and government officials did not need to grow their own food. They were able to only work and specialise at their jobs. These specialists began to live and work together in central areas where all could find them. These areas eventually became towns.

Archaeological findings support this assertion with evidence that the very first urban civilisations appeared in the isolated valleys of six great rivers – Mesopotamia (Iraq), 6 000 BC; Nile valley in Egypt, 5 000 BC; Yellow River in China, 4 000 BC; Indus Valley of Pakistan, 3 000 BC; Aztecs and Maya of México and Central America, 1 000 BC; and Incas in Peru, 1 000 BC.

In these sites, conditions that favoured the development of early agricultural revolutions were found. Findings indicate various reasons such as the shift to permanent agriculture in which the development of irrigation to control floods and droughts, the preservation of seeds and the cultivation of cereals were important trigger elements. These innovative explosions of technology created conditions that led to urban development. Humans were freed from dependence on hunting and gathering. Having a secure source of food made sedentary life rather than nomadism possible. These developments acting together attracted and consequently supported larger human settlements.

On the African continent, Egypt was the first of many civilisations that lasted thousands of years. Its civilisation was already over 3 000 years old when Rome was built. It contributed immensely to the development of science, mathematics, medicine, technology and the arts. Relative to this study, it was the Niger-Benue delta region in West Africa where the dark-skinned Bantu race is believed to have originated. It is here that the first formation of city-states, the kingdoms of Oyo and Benin (circa 11th century) started. Due to their rich soils, these kingdoms’ political and economic prowess expanded rapidly, leading to an independent trading power that controlled the coastal ports along the Niger delta. It was from here that the ‘old kingdom’ of Ghana and the ‘great kingdom’ of Mali developed. Elsewhere, the Ethiopian empire and the Swahili towns developed on the eastern highlands and on the east coast of Africa, respectively.

There are numerous ancient towns in Africa. Alexandria in Egypt was founded by the Greek conqueror, Alexander the Great of Macedonia, in 331 BC. Kano and Benin were founded many centuries ago. Benin was an important town when it was visited by Portuguese explorers in 1486. Islamic centres like Timbuktu and Djenne in Mali, Orthodox Christian cities like Axum in Ethiopia and later European traders contributed to their growth and transformation. Others were the port of trade cities like Zanzibar and Kilwa in Tanzania and those of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in Ghana and Nigeria.

These African urban centres were demonstrably indigenous creations. Islamic cities were especially predominant in West Africa and Western Sudan, where they developed as slave or camel caravan trade routes. The Swahili city-states thrived along the East African coast on the Indian Ocean. Islamic Arab travellers and traders crossing the Sahara Desert or sailing down the East African coast more than 2 000 years ago encountered existing populated centres based on politics, economics and cultural dynamics. In addition to contributing to the growth and centralisation of these sites, these traders made some of them seats of Islamic concentration and learning. In these cities, rural economies supported urban centres, while the cities dominated the countryside for continued survival.

Focusing on Atlantic ports from the 16th through to the 18th centuries, note that it is divided into the early rise of the slave trade and its peak. The confluence of African and European influences resulted in the development of a Creole culture, providing these cities with a distinctive character and organisation. Given the recent spate of studies on the Atlantic slave trade and its impacts on Africa, the industrial revolution increased contact and trade in many sorts of goods with Europeans, decisively fashioning seaports. The dynamics differed radically between those in West Africa and elsewhere. In West Africa, urbanisation took on a markedly mercantile and proto-capitalist form. In East Africa, the continued Indian Ocean slave trade and the resultant local violence reinforced the military and political aspects of the ports. With the advent of colonialism, some African cities were already shaped and Europeans simply adapted to and expanded their existing nature, structure, and networks.

On the contrary, before the arrival of European or Arabic settlers, there were very few known towns in the southern part of Africa. Inland cities included Great Zimbabwe, Mapungubwe and Khami. The Dutch first established Cape Town in South Africa in 1652, but the majority of towns were not founded until the 19th century. In this region, towns generally started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly to serve different colonial interests. Metropoles emerged for military and security purposes, as sources of raw materials, trade entrepôts, indigenous markets, specialised craft production centres, and administrative as well as religious and political centres. A commonality involves the dynamic response of cities to changing internal and external political, economic and religious influences. These influences transformed – rather than created or disrupted – these urban centres. Several common themes emerged from this disparate and dynamic group.

Those settlements related to trade mainly developed as transportation hubs on water, railway sidings, roads and others. Almost all of today’s large world cities, except for the Johannesburg and Pretoria conurbation, generally developed along the coast or on river estuaries as trading hubs for easy transportation of goods by ship or for military purposes. However, there are others especially in sub–Saharan Africa that developed inland. These are relatively young and still in their formative stages. Consequently, they face different problems compared to older cities or those in Europe and the Americas.

In a similar way, all towns in Zambia were established after the 1890s, for different purposes. Mbala was established in 1893 as a fort to prevent German encroachment. Ndola was established in 1902 as a resting place along the east-to-southwest African slave route. Livingstone, on the other hand, was established in 1905 after the railway spanned the Batoka Gorge at Victoria Falls. Lusaka was also established in 1905 as a railway siding, while Kitwe was established in 1932 to mine copper. The industrial and economic activities which developed around these areas attracted people to vend their labour and produce. They ended up sheltering in nearby settlements, which eventually developed into towns.

The genesis of urban life

It is universally accepted that even if urban life may have originated in a number of centres around the globe, the earliest examples of true urban development were found in Mesopotamia. This area has had the greatest influence on the development of human society. In this river valley, development of more efficient tools, particularly the iron-shod plough, increased the productivity of agriculture and enabled the production of a sufficiently large surplus of storable food. This and others attracted higher densities of rural populations. The greater intensity of agricultural production which eventually developed also made it easier to assemble the surplus necessary to support an urban population.

In this period, significant developments took place. The establishment of large settlements enabled the development of technology in different crafts. In addition to agriculture, unprecedented technological developments and growth were ignited in transport, communications and weaponry. This in turn led to the invention of the ox-drawn plough, the wheeled cart and the sailing boat. Irrigation techniques were improved and some new crops (like the date palm) were added to the resources of the community. The art of metallurgy was developed, leading to the use of iron tools and weaponry. The design of ships was improved so that they could sail faster and more easily against the direction of the wind. Alphabetical writing was adopted and coinage came into use in trade.

Johnson (1977) explains that improvements in local transport allowed the food surplus to be assembled in towns, but at the same time new social institutions were necessary to make that food surplus available to urban dwellers. There were also profound social changes involved in bringing together larger and more complex communities. These became collection points of specialists of various kinds of crafts rather than as self-sufficient family groups. Indeed, it is from here that conditions favourable to urban life and urbanisation spread to other areas. After its initial establishment in the river valleys, urban life then evolved with the expansionist and colonial policy of ancient Greece.

Confronted with the limits forced on their population size by the rocky landscape and its inability to produce adequate food, the rise of the Ancient, Classical and Hellenistic Greek empires from around 2 700 BC to 323 BC, and then the Roman Empire from 753 BC to around 337 AD, ignited and entrenched colonisation and the trade revolution. The leadership and conquests of Alexander the Great created a new political situation. The colonising influence of Ancient Greece rapidly opened much of western Asia to trade and it almost absorbed the entire Persian Empire. They used this need for food and other wares to trade even beyond the Mediterranean Sea. As a result, they founded many colonies in the south of France, Sicily, in the southern part of Italy, North Africa, the Aegean, the Black Sea and the Middle East. Each colony was a city-state modelled along the lines of the parent city. Old cities flourished and new ones were founded.

While parent cities like Athens were generally organic and quite chaotic in their layout, the colonial towns were always planned cities. Here they used uncomplicated but practical ideas based on the extensive use of the grid iron system. This was undoubtedly the initial trigger points for urban planning. In the shell of the colonising movement, they also spread their urban way of life (economy and culture), their architecture, art and urbanism to the colonies. This is how they consciously or unconsciously developed colonialism. Better iron weaponry aided the process. In some city-states, specialisation in craft manufacture and in local agriculture increased. Consequently, long-distance trade in food also expanded. Greek cities became increasingly dependent on trade in corn, brought by sea from the shores of Macedonia and the Black Sea. Egypt remained an essential breadbasket to both the Greek and Roman Empires’ food needs (Gardner, 1975; Johnson 1977; and Morris 1994).

After conquering Greece, the Romans, on their part, copied, modified and developed a lot of their ideas. In their expansionist policy, they planned their military encampments using the castra. At its peak, the Roman Empire controlled the entire Mediterranean and Atlantic seas, from the Middle East through the Iberian Peninsula to England. It used urbanism as a strategy to unite and control the Empire. The responsibilities of running these huge empires engendered the need for administrators and stimulated the growth of some key cities like London, Cologne, Alexandria, Carthage and Constantinople (ibid). These developments allowed certain cities to expand greatly in size and become important administrative and trading centres generally leading to their urbanisation.

In 395 AD, the united Roman Empire under emperor Theodosius was broken up into the west and east by Barbarians from northern Europe. In 476 AD, emperor Romulus Augustus was overthrown by Odoacer. The western part of the empire broke up into smaller units resembling modern-day Western Europe. The east only crumbled in 1 453 AD under mortar fire from the Ottoman Turks. The reconstruction of the cities that were burned and looted and the development of new towns around palaces, monasteries and castles centred on defence, industry (based on wool, coal and iron, etc.), and trade.

Urban life was to accelerate during the industrial revolution as it came with the diffusion of the type of life that became the most important strand in urban history. It was therefore in Western Europe that many developments took place which were later to transform the geography of cities worldwide. The brand of urban life which eventually evolved promoted the expansion of trade and industry, and the emigration of populations from this region led to the export of city life to many un-urbanised parts of the world. It would eventually reach Zambia after the partition of Africa. Johnson (1977) explains that the economic success of Western Europeans, both in their homeland and in North America, meant that the ‘Western’ city became the dominant urban form in the 20th century.

1.2 Pre-industrial settlements

Whatever the precise reason, villages increasingly became administrative centres and were used for the exchange, storage and redistribution of goods. If anything, the switch to urban life was not based purely on economics – it was also a gradual and sometimes very rapid social, technical and political process which transformed the pre-industrial settlement. Life transformed from its humble beginning in the hunter-gatherer through to farming communities in the Mesopotamian enclave to the type of exploded urban life we see around the world today. It is not easy to pinpoint the exact date and time of this transformation since the structure of settlements kept evolving.

Improved methods of transport and of handling financial transactions encouraged the furthering of trade. Rudimental as these developments may appear in the computer age, they were then state-of-the-art milestones that led to improved standards of living, longevity of life and consequently further developments in other aspects of urban life. Improved communications and weaponry were a further stimulus to urban development, both by increasing the number of cities and by encouraging the growth of certain settlements to above-average size. The need to pay for and quickly move troops around conflict areas and to land them safely into battle led to the creation of new currencies, the manufacture of larger ships, and building of better harbours and new roads. In turn, these needed space for manufacture and assembly consequently leading to new and innovative technology and greater trade with conquered lands. Ultimately agglomeration, economies of scale and general urban development set in.

1.3 Industrial settlements and urbanisation

Urban colonisation and consequently urban development and technical advances appear to be mutually inclusive. It was during the period of urban colonisation that a series of technical advances were made. It could also be because of these technical advances that led to urban colonisation. These developments generally led to an impressive addition to the range of human equipment.

Unprecedented industrial growth, rapid urbanisation and the need for planning

Unprecedented industrial growth and urbanisation

At certain points, historically, cities are parasitic on the productive countryside where the balance between the natural and the built environment is better sustained. As they grow, different kinds of specialists increase until many town workers are skilled in special trades. There emerge lawyers, bankers, clerks, goldsmiths and engineers, to give only a few examples. Much of the wealth of a country, whether crops or minerals, is brought to town. These goods may be sent to factories for processing before being sold. Goods may be exported or imported in exchange. Towns therefore evolve into great markets in a country or region. They consequently evolve into more complex industrial entities and multi-layered specialties start taking shape. It is these specialties with their challenges which attract all shades of humanity, the rich and the poor, the most educated and the illiterate. With these changes, urban areas start growing and the differences between city and countryside starts emerging.

Rapid urbanisation

As the settlements started and continued expanding, more people were drawn in search of better livelihoods. The growth in the number of people living in large settlements and the diffusion of urban life to every part of the habitable world started at that time to become one of the characteristic features of today’s life. Although there have been towns in some restricted parts of the globe since pre-historic times, the modern situation in which a substantial part of the population has become urbanised and in which cities increasingly dominate social and economic life, had its origins in Western Europe during the industrial revolution.

During the industrial revolution, both industrialisation and urbanisation accelerated and became influential. Since then, most cultures have leaned towards city life. The result this has prompted on the organisation of society and production has been phenomenal. Unfortunately, a situation arose where – due to improved agricultural methods, good food surplus and improved standards of living – the population of settlements started growing in loose and uncoordinated ways. Urban areas eventually became congested and difficult to manage.

Whatever management existed at the time lacked the skill and capacity to provide proper services like jobs, housing and sanitation to the inhabitants. As pre-industrial cities morphed into industrial cities, the process attracted rural urban migrants, drops in the mortality rate and an increase in birth rates coupled with better longevity of life. These and other factors consequently led to drastic changes in population growth, its distribution and settlement patterns. As industrialisation became rapid, urban populations also grew. It led to rapid and unprecedented urbanisation.

With rapid urbanisation came numerous negative challenges which implied serious consequence for the environment, as well as a growing concern for the impacts posed to long-term urban sustainability. It is clear that during the industrial revolution, economic growth fuelled not only rapid urban expansion, but housing shortages and squalor with attendant urban pathologies (crime, gender-based violence, substance abuse, etc.), as well as a horde of other social ills. This resulted in congestion, unhealthy environments, pollution, insecurity and outbreaks of diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, etc. These changes created new urban dynamics and tensions, which arose because they altered the structure of pre-industrial settlements. To adequately address them, there arose the need for coping strategies. These were to be imbedded in new legal and professional controls to counter their negative effects on urban life in particular, and on the environment in general.

The need for and the birth of town planning

As a result of the rapid urbanisation taking place around the