the zambian innovation series: why this matters to me
i run a valve and instrumentation supply company in kitwe. flow valve limited — twenty-three years old this year, serving the mining sector. i am not a tech founder. i don't write code. but i have watched, over the past decade, as the tools available to a business like mine have changed in ways that would have seemed extraordinary when flow valve started in 2002.
i carry in my pocket a device that gives me real-time commodity prices, connects me to chinese principal suppliers in shenzhen before kitwe has had its morning coffee, processes payments without a bank branch, and translates a technical specification from mandarin in seconds. the infrastructure of doing business in zambia in 2026 is fundamentally different from what it was in 2002 — and most of that difference comes from digital technology.
that's what this series is about. not innovation as an abstract concept. innovation as the specific, practical, daily changes in what is possible for zambians doing business, farming, accessing healthcare, learning, and building things.
zambia has nearly 20 million mobile subscribers. more than 12 million active mobile money wallets. bongohive — established 2011 — has supported more than 300 startups and in november 2025 signed an MoU with UNZA to build a direct pathway from academic research to commercial startup. lusaka hosted the 10th edition of the africa fintech summit — the largest bi-annual fintech summit on the continent.
none of this was true in 2002. all of it is true now.
the gap between what zambia's innovation ecosystem is and what it could become is the subject of this series. i'm writing it as a business person who lives in the middle of it — not as an outside observer.
and i'm starting with the question that i think matters most: what does it take to move from being a country that adopts other people's innovations to a country that creates its own?
the zambian innovation series begins. 🇿🇲💡