Zambia’s fragile recovery: Integrating cost-of-living relief, structural transformation, and governance for sustainable development

Abstract

While Zambia’s macroeconomic recovery following debt restructuring has restored investor confidence, it has not translated into broad-based improvements in household welfare. As the cost of living rises, the cost of food, fuel and energy continues to erode real incomes and make poverty and inequality worse. The article proposes an integrated sustainable development framework that tackles simultaneously short-term social protection, medium-term economic diversification into climate-resilient sectors, and governance reforms that restore the social contract. The study empirically demonstrates the widening gap between macroeconomic gains and lived experience by systematically analysing 137 Zambian newspaper articles (January 2024 – June 2025), triangulated with Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR) Basic Needs Basket data and civil society monitoring reports. The analysis finds that structural barriers, such as dependence on copper, low-productivity rain-fed agriculture and vulnerability in the hydropower sector, and governance contradictions, such as constricted civic space and perceptions of selective anti-corruption enforcement, are undermining sustainable development. The political economy perspective exposes the vested interests and institutional path dependencies that sustain policy inertia, while gender analysis exposes the disproportionate burden on women in coping with price shocks. Drawing on these findings, the article proposes a complementary suite of actions, including scaling up digital cash transfers indexed to a basic-needs basket; reforming the Food Reserve Agency via transparent price triggers and competitive tendering; investing in climate-resilient agriculture and solar energy diversification; implementing labour-intensive public works in climate-resilient infrastructure; amending the Public Order Act to a simple notification regime; depoliticising anti-corruption enforcement through transparent case selection and visible reinvestment of recovered assets into social protection; and institutionalising a permanent multi-stakeholder forum to co-produce cost-of-living policies – all anchored in the Sustainable Development Goals. In the absence of such an integrated governance-centred approach, Zambia’s stabilisation will remain fragile, with economic shocks and governance deficits reinforcing one another.