Margaret Mwanakatwe

"Encouraging people to become employers is one of the key elements to the growth of the private sector and the fostering of the entrepreneurial spirit."

"I really believe that economic emancipation through women is something that can turn this country around."

"The opportunity is out there. If I don’t put a road there, how do I harness the potential that is there. Debt, much as it looks high, it’s a debt for the future."

"If we do not position our industry to become a key regional player, we will be faced with high levels of imports into our country, which can lead to the death of local industry."

"When the procedures for starting a business and the licenses are expensive with tedious procedures, entrepreneurs avoid that cost by operating informally."

"In the medium term I see things improving mainly because of what we’re concentrating on as a government. In my ministry in particular, traditional exports will grow. Some of the things that we’re doing to enhance them is strengthening our relations with our immediate neighbors like DRC for example. Congo is in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) but they have not yet reached a stage where they can fully liberalize for us to trade freely."

"My challenge to them was to come here and don’t look on Zambia as somewhere where they’re just going to take their goods. “Look at Zambia as somewhere you can also get goods into South Africa” I said. And I’m happy to say that now Zambian honey has finally entered the South African market. The things that we’re trying to do to support industries such as honey, pineapples, cassava, are oriented to strengthen the value chain and to be able to produce for non-traditional exports. Within this context, the Tripartite is key."

"We should be signing another bilateral agreement with Angola, a country that hasn’t definitively entered COMESA yet. Trade between our countries is once more a normal tariff. When we sign this agreement we will be able to ensure that our industry here will have an export market. That bilateral agreement puts Zambia at an advantage because we can’t get our products into that market on a duty-free basis at the moment. Angola doesn’t produce much, and they want everything from Zambia: rice, sugar, fruits, vegetables and they also want chickens and eggs. They want everything, and here we are. If we can build up the capacity within our industries, we are able to use Angola as a market."