Why Zambia
Why Zambia — and why now
Zambia is one of Southern Africa's most accessible entry points: politically stable, strategically located, and backed by an investment regime designed to attract international capital. For companies willing to move with the right local partner, the window is open now.
A regional gateway
Zambia sits at the centre of Southern and Central Africa, land-linked to eight neighbouring countries and inside both the SADC and COMESA trading blocs. A business established in Zambia is not a business confined to Zambia — it is a platform that can scale across the region. Velasum builds market entries with that wider horizon in mind.
An economy anchored in real demand
Zambia is one of the world's leading copper producers and holds a significant share of global copper reserves — and copper and cobalt are precisely the metals the global energy transition now depends on. That demand pulls through into mining services, industrial equipment, and technology.
Beyond mining, demand is real and growing in renewable energy and solar (driven by a structural need for reliable power), agriculture and agro-processing, healthcare and diagnostics, infrastructure, and ICT. These are not speculative markets. They are sectors with buyers today.
An investment regime built to welcome you
Through the Zambia Development Agency (ZDA), qualifying investment in priority sectors and Multi-Facility Economic Zones can access a range of incentives — both fiscal and non-fiscal. Fiscal incentives can include relief on customs duty for machinery and equipment, accelerated depreciation on capital equipment, and tax relief in the early years of operation. Non-fiscal incentives can include guarantees against nationalisation and facilitation of immigration permits, secondary licences, land and utilities. Reforms have also widened the door for Zambian-partnered ventures.
Specific rates, thresholds and periods change over time. We help partners assess current eligibility against official ZDA guidance for their project.
Why a local partner is essential
Zambia's investment framework deliberately rewards local participation, and in practice a foreign entrant needs a credible local partner to register correctly, secure the incentives it qualifies for, reach institutional and government buyers, and build the relationships that determine access. The country is actively courting international investment — including a marked push to attract Chinese manufacturers and industrial partners — which means the opportunity is real, but so is the competition to capture it well.
This is where Velasum fits. We are the local partner that lets an international company enter properly the first time — with the standards, the relationships and the operating capability already in place.
The risks — named honestly, and managed
We do not pretend Zambia is frictionless. Currency and macroeconomic conditions can be volatile; regulation is navigable but not simple; logistics and power reliability require planning. Every one of these risks is more manageable with a local operating partner who has faced them before — which is exactly the role we play. We would rather set realistic expectations at the start than oversell and disappoint.