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This morning we formulated a list of the people I want to meet over the next couple of weeks. It includes government officials, training providers and transport operators from various modes. Some of them will respond best if I just call into their offices; others prefer a couple of days' notice. I plan to ask everybody open questions about their opinions and demands of CILT. The currency here is hard to equate. One pound sterling is about 7,200 Zambian Kwacha, so I feel like a millionaire with my purse full of huge notes. CILT has a handful of corporate members who each pay a subscription of about five million Kwacha. I started trying to imagine companies paying five million pounds for membership of CILT(UK) before I realised it's more like 700 pounds. That's still expensive in anyone's currency though, and the important question I want to answer is what value they expect for their money.

Henry Chipewo (Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport) has weighed in on the problem of infrastructure free ridership. Henry's radical proposal is for government to come up with a policy framework that will restrict the movement of cargo above a certain tonnage on roads in order to avoid damage to infrastructure : "The roads, railway and air transport have to complement each other. What the roads can't do, we expect the railway to do the job and what the railway sector cannot provide, the airlines are expected to offer the service.....Now what government should do is come up with a policy framework that will restrict the transportation of bulk goods on roads but through railway. This will reduce on the depletion of our road network which is already in a bad state...It is unreasonable to carry a bulk of copper, sugar or any other goods by road when that can be done using the railway lines.....There is no time that government will be able to reconstruct 80,000 kilometers of the road network in Zambia. For the country to be competitive in terms of trade, we require strong rail infrastructure because this is the most appropriate for the transportation of bulk goods"

In a country where the majority of the population is classified as poor by international standards, it may be puzzling to find that owning a car is not so much of a luxury anymore. Indeed, the Zambian population has been spending a little heavily on cars in the last few years that one might think that the so-called poverty levels are only an exaggeration. If not fiction. Take for instance, the fact that an average of 50 second hand vehicles are imported per day seven days a week from South Africa via the port of Durban in South Africa. With this, the Government earns over K500 million every day in exercise duty on second hand vehicles, according to the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) estimates, which are reproduced by Edem Djokotoe in Show Me The Money.

Reports coming out from Livingstone Airport in Zambia appear to confirm a major change in the Visa system and costs for overseas visitors to Victoria Falls and the rest of Zambia. Our sources have

Since Zambia's railways were concessioned to Railway System of Zambia (RSZ), not much has happened in terms of improving the infrastructure and operations of the reorganised company. At the time o

A bus collided head-on with a truck in Zambia, killing at least 15 people and seriously injuring 13, police said Sunday. The accident occurred Saturday evening when the truck tried to overtake ano

Mccarthy, the automotive division of the Bidvest group, last month launched two new Chinese vehicle brands, Foton and Meiya, in the South African market. McCarthy is introducing eight models in th

A labour dispute is boiling at the Tanzania Zambia Railways Authority (TAZARA) over the difference of workers' wages in the two countries. Following the predicament, Tanzania Railways Workers Uni 2 Vote(s)