keabetswe

Geopolitics and industrialization

[Distant Relative @LankyObserver]

WHY WE SPEAK ON THE ISSUES WE DO

By Lanky Observer

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong", wrote Voltaire decades ago.

The French philosopher and mathematician was speaking on dissent and the risks incurred by openly criticizing power.

At no time have the philosopher's words rang truer than they do in Zambia today. These are scary times for those daring to speak on government excess, criticise those in power and call attention to misgovernance.

Not a few people have gone silent, for fear of getting into trouble with power holders. Others, fearful of losing what advantages they have now in business and elsewhere, would rather not rock the boat. Jobs may be lost, businesses targeted and victimized, contracts revoked.

It is true that the State has become increasingly authoritarian the last few years. It is also true that many who have dared to speak on some of what has gone wrong have paid a heavy price for it. People are fearful, their voices fading away into silence.

We must resist the urge to cower away now more than ever. We must make our voices heard, especially on the important issues.

The burdens we carry, the challenges we confront are vast and enormous. Everywhere one looks today, Zambia grapples with innumerable challenges. To confront and ultimately overcome them, we will have to marshal our best collective effort. To do that, we must accurately identify and diagnose these problems. That will not happen with a culled and timid cadre of citizen.

Our people have to be reminded to have a healthy self-image, to question and stand up to authority, especially when said authority does not represent their best interests. They must garner the self-confidence to give expression to their best aspirations, especially and including in the criticizing of their leadership.

We have too much fear today, not enough courage. Too much worrying about today, not enough concern for tomorrow. We might have peace, but our people are a long distance from living dignified lives as we cower and wish these circumstances away.

Over 60% of our citizens are living in poverty today. Our GDP per capita hovers around US$1400. Nearly 70% of our 22 million citizens are unemployed. Of that figure, at least half are below the age of 35. About 96% of our children cannot read and write by the age of 8. Only 3% of our population has a Bachelor's degree or higher. Agriculture provides a living to over 65% of our population, but contributes only 3% of GDP. The median wage in that industry is K700/month (US$35). Of our 42 million hectares of arable land, only 15% is under cultivation. We have a housing deficit north of 2 million units, leaving the majority of our citizens underhoused, with most of them packed away in unsanitary townships dotted across our landscape, while our population growth averages 4%.

We could trot more statistics away, but these are the grim realities Zambia grapples with today.

To confront them and begin to formulate solutions, it behooves us to apply ourselves in a much different way than we always have. We will not overcome these problems employing the methods that created them. Much of Zambia's malaise is structural, resolving it will require a radically different approach, attacking these problems at their root.

Zambia is on her 7th Republican President and 4th different political party. None of them have been able to overcome, even begin to confront the issues in a meaningful way. Our current trajectory indicates no different.

So what do we do?

First and foremost, we must cultivate a conscientized citizenry. Then it must be taught and encouraged to think, analyze and understand issues thoroughly. That begins with our leadership.

We speak on these things on the understanding that the outcomes we desire will not fall into our laps, they will have to be worked for. We speak so our people are aware of where we are, what needs doing and where we could go from here. That's why we mustn't stop talking.

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@chischans The reserves are financed by external creditors because Zambia currently does currently not have the capacity to finance them. They country has various internal debts that it's still struggling to pay.

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@chischans Zambia has grown its foreign reserves significantly through increased copper exports, inflows from multilateral lenders (IMF, World Bank, AfDB), Bank of Zambia (BoZ) purchases, project funding, and interest earnings, reaching historic highs (e.g., $4.31B end-2024, $5.2B by Sept25

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@diamondtvzambia Every year, the country loses out on hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment and growth because they are hijacked by unmitigated petty corruption, blocked because law-abiding investors refuse to pay kickbacks to Zambian bureaucrats or leaders never held accountable.

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@diamondtvzambia The government’s own reports reveal that every year we lose over $4 billion in dirty money flows to East Asia. That is Zambian money that does not benefit the Zambian people or contribute to the budget. If taxed, that would bring $1 billion for the government to fund healthcare.

[Diggers.News @DiggersOfNews]

We’re sliding into an oppressive one-party state – M’membe

By Diggers Reporter

SOCIALIST party president Fred M’membe says Zambia will not be a good place for anyone to live in, unless the UPND government addresses various economic challenges.
Dr M’membe has noted that corporate interests and mining companies enjoy tax privileges, while the working class and rural poor people are left to

https://t.co/cCjIWghlUl

Read more @ https://t.co/xPDGUNkJay

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@znbctoday such a sad occurrence

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@DavidKa07247477 this may seem good on paper but understand that when dealing with Americans promises are an afterthought to them.
https://t.co/tUA4GOghsg

[Chetuya Chinagolum @Chetuyachinago]

Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the American Red Cross launched a massive fundraising campaign and collected $500 million in donations.
They promised to build brand-new, massive healthcare facilities and permanent communities for displaced Haitians.
Investigations later revealed they built just 6 permanent and substandard homes.

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@BobSuper9 @diamondtvzambia pardon my insults i thought you were a cadre.

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@BobSuper9 @diamondtvzambia @ssishuwa The state machinery is a work of art. They have dedicated ministries, renowned behavioral psychologists, black-budget intelligence agencies, state-funded media conglomerates, and thousands of full-time operatives whose sole existential purpose is to craft, test, and inject lies

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@BobSuper9 @diamondtvzambia @ssishuwa This is not because humans are inherently stupid or psychologically impervious to facts; it is mostly because the mechanisms executing this grand deception are so flawlessly engineered that it requires a near-superhuman level of cognitive vigilance to not fall for them.

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@BuyoyaJonah Every year, the country loses out on hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment and growth because they are hijacked by unmitigated petty corruption, blocked because law-abiding investors refuse to pay kickbacks to Zambian bureaucrats or leaders never held accountable.

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@BuyoyaJonah The government’s own reports reveal that every year we lose over $4 billion in dirty money flows to East Asia. That is Zambian money that does not benefit the Zambian people or contribute to the budget. If taxed, that would bring $1 billion for the government to fund healthcare.

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@BuyoyaJonah You might think that this deal might actually deliver on its promises but the US does not care for the wellbeing or health of the Zambian people. US officials and think tanks are all told to adopt the values of pax americana, whatever the cost may be.
https://t.co/tUA4GOghsg

[Chetuya Chinagolum @Chetuyachinago]

Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the American Red Cross launched a massive fundraising campaign and collected $500 million in donations.
They promised to build brand-new, massive healthcare facilities and permanent communities for displaced Haitians.
Investigations later revealed they built just 6 permanent and substandard homes.

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@BuyoyaJonah That is not partnership at all, and there is nothing progressive about being ripped in a one sided deal. It is a transaction in which a country's sick are used as leverage to extract its minerals and its citizens' medical records. There is nothing progressive about this deal.

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@BuyoyaJonah Zambia has shared health data with the United States for over two decades under PEPFAR. But that data is not the same as America is demanding in the agreements. Washington demanded this time was something else entirely, pathogen samples for 25 years and health data for 10 years

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@BuyoyaJonah They understand that the African population will soon be too huge to enforce using prior methods. They have instead pivoted to find a way to eradicate or slow down our population growth. Africa will soon have elite overproduction and then a revolution.
https://t.co/rjOEjX4MeW

[Onyeka ☭ @R_eq_uin]

Thoughts:

It is impossible to keep Africa down forever

I know this more than I know my own name.

A continent that is projected to hold nearly half of all humans on earth around the third quarter of this century cannot be suppressed in perpetuity.

At some point, the material and social contradictions will become too glaring to ignore, and the system snaps like a twig.

Eventually, we and/or our immediate descendants (children and grandchildren) will start to ask hard questions:

"Why is our continent that is the richest in natural resources and arable land the hungriest and poorest while people who cannot pronounce our names reap all the benefits?"

"Why do we have to suffer when there's absolutely ZERO material reason?"

'Will heaven fall if we just tried something else"?

This new generation will come, and they will have zero loyalty to what came before them. Because all they'll have known is mediocrity, misery, hunger and insecurity

They will become furious.
They will rage against the system.
And they will destroy it.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that there is no guarantee that this struggle will birth the Africa of our dreams.

It can go a hundred different ways, even scenarios where the local political leaders become the new oppressors...

Where the new African elite keep 90% of the pie and the rest continue fighting for scraps.

This is why, in my opinion, the NUMBER ONE duty of our generation is to make sure the right ideology is in place.

A guiding ideology that provides the institutional machinery and legitimacy to create the material, social and political realities that will safeguard our interests for the next 200-500 years.

Doable

[keabetswe @FDMA245]

@BuyoyaJonah this deal is predatory to the future health of Zambians and Zambian politicians(it can be used to blackmail and sabotage their health). It can also be used to create bioweapons that are effective to Africans but ineffective to Americans.
https://t.co/IakNvZiJdq

[Chetuya Chinagolum @Chetuyachinago]

In 2025, the United States under the Trump administration pulled out of the World Health Organization.
In that same year, the U.S. offered billions of dollars in desperately needed aid to over twenty African nations, including Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and Eswatini, to fight HIV, TB, and malaria.

These are separate events, but they are not accidents.
They are part of a much larger American ambition to fight the multipolar world and emerge as the sole undisputed superpower.

In the past, empires expanded by conquering land to control agriculture, gold, or oil.
Today, any emerging global power will have to build its dominance by controlling data, artificial intelligence, orbital satellites, autonomous systems, and semiconductor supply chains.

Modern warfare has evolved, and this is where AI comes in.
Militarily, AI acts as a "hyper-general." It can process millions of satellite images, intercepted communications, and radar signatures in seconds, dictating battlefield strategies faster than a human brain can comprehend.
An emerging empire with superintelligent AI will simply out-think and out-maneuver any rival nation stuck using human analysts.

Data is extremely important for this grand strategy. Artificial intelligence cannot exist without massive oceans of data to train on. An emerging empire needs to harvest biological data, financial transactions, consumer habits, and logistical information.
Once this data is gathered, it can also be used to train autonomous systems like drone swarms, unmanned submarines, and robotic infantry units.

All of these allow an emerging empire to project brutal military force anywhere in the world without risking a single citizen's life.
It can enforce blockades with autonomous ships or suppress uprisings with loitering munitions. Because there are no "body bags" coming home, the political cost of war drops to zero, making it dangerously easy for the empire to enforce its will globally.

Now we can understand why America is ready to offer billions of dollars to these African nations. In exchange for the money, these countries would have to sign Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) granting the U.S. government direct access to their national digital health architectures and surveillance databases. It also includes a twenty-five year "specimen sharing agreement," requiring them to turn over physical pathogen samples and genomic sequence data to the U.S. within five days of detecting a new outbreak.

If an empire gains direct access to a sovereign nation’s national digital health architecture and surveillance databases, the result is not just spying: it is total state level vulnerability. They can track the medical histories of politicians, military commanders, and key civil servants. If a leader has a chronic condition, an addictive behavior, or a mental health history, that information becomes the ultimate blackmail tool. An empire can influence policy not by debating, but by threatening to leak sensitive medical records.

The "specimen sharing agreement" is even worse. If an empire has access to genomic data, they can identify the unique genetic markers of a specific population. Armed with this data, it becomes possible to develop targeted biological agents: pathogens designed to be less effective against the empire's own population but highly effective against a specific rival group.

The question now is: why did Trump pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization before embarking on these data mining adventures?

The answer is simple: America does not want to share. Under the WHO’s multilateral framework, health data and resources are often treated as collective goods. For example, if Kenya gives the U.S. access to their health data, under the WHO framework, Kenya is entitled to whatever discoveries or vaccines are produced from such data.
By withdrawing from the WHO, the U.S. eliminated the "middleman" of international bureaucracy. Now, the U.S. avoids the obligation to provide those same partner nations with guaranteed or affordable access to the products developed from their own citizens' data.
The shift to bilateralism allows the U.S. to integrate health funding more tightly with broader geopolitical interests, such as access to critical minerals.