North-Western Province, Zambia

The North-Western Province of the Republic of Zambia is one of the ten provinces of the country.

With an area of 125,826 km² and a population of 727,044 (as of 2010), i.e. 5.77 people per square kilometre, the North West Province is one of the most sparsely populated provinces in Zambia and also the one with the worst road connections. 87 % of the people live as subsistence farmers. Cash incomes are rare here. The capital of the North West Province is Solwezi.

The numerous rivers make a good road network impossible due to the lack of bridges. Their highly fluctuating water levels, in turn, only allow limited navigation. A new railway line from Solwezi to the west on the Angolan border to the Benguela Railway could further open up the north of the province. With the exception of the M8 from Solwezi to Kasempa, almost all the roads in North West Province are unpaved, and from Kasempa to Mwinilunga they are well-maintained gravel roads and, incidentally, rarely smoothed with a road grader. This makes market access for farmers very difficult and keeps modernisation away.

The North West Province is shaped by the three mighty rivers Zambezi, Kafue and Kabompo. There are huge seasonal flood plains, vast grassy steppes, impassable Kalahari sand plains and endless miombo woodlands. The climate is cool and dry in the dry season from May to July, 0-10 °C at night and 15-25 °C during the day. August to November it gets warmer to 30 °C and the air becomes humid and oppressive until the rainy season starts around November. The rainy season from December to April is warm and humid, raining almost every day.

The North West Province comprises very different climatic zones. They range from the rainy north with forests to the arid, sandy south. The north of the province is the headwaters of the Zambezi. Its floodplains and those of its numerous tributaries allow intensive cattle breeding and rice cultivation far into the south. The latter needs to be considerably developed and expanded.

The North West Province is not a poor province, but it is a comparatively isolated one, since the neighbouring Angolan province of Moxico is even more sparsely populated, and to the north the Democratic Republic of Congo also has only the so-called "hungry land" with just as few people to offer. Nevertheless, significant economic impulses come from there. Domestically, only the Copperbelt remains as a sales area, which sets its own conditions through its mining industry as a currency-generating region, and thus determines the prices. These, in turn, are eminently political, since the prices for food here determine the political stability of the country as a whole. This severely restricts the willingness to perform in the North West Province - as in many other provinces that, unlike the Central Province as the granary of the country, are not massively promoted with investments and almost all development aid projects.

An oddity in this province are the numerous lynchings "for witchcraft", the real contexts of which are not elucidated in reports. What is striking is that they mainly victimize very old people, which points to a dramatic undersupply of food in the province and to oppressive poverty. A similar phenomenon is noted in Kaputa, a very poor and undeveloped district in the Northern Province, where the state is effectively non-existent and subsistence without cash income is normal.

Districts

• Chavuma
• Kabompo
• Kasempa
• Mufumbwe
• Mwinilunga
• Solwezi
• Zambezi (Zambia)