Population — practice question

Zambia is a middle-income nation, yet 60% of its population of 15 million live below the poverty line. In 2017, the Zambian government said that it was intending to shift the country’s capital away from Lusaka in the south of the country and to Ngabwe, a village in the centre of the country. Ngabwe at present has poor roads and other infrastructure. Moving to Ngabwe, however, could help the country deal with its rapid population growth and could also encourage entrepreneurs to establish new businesses there. In 2017, the country had a zero net migration rate, a birth rate of 41.8, a death rate of 12.4, and a life expectancy of 52.5 years. Zambia’s average economic growth rate was 6.8% between 2004 and 2014. After 2014, this rate declined, partly because of a depreciation in the kwacha, Zambia’s currency. The fall in the foreign exchange rate of the kwacha helped push the country’s inflation rate up from 10.1% in 2015 to 20.6% in 2016. In 2017, the labour force of 7.2 million made up 48% of the country’s population. People work in several industries including agriculture, banking, building, copper mining, and emerald mining. Fig. 1.1 shows the link between copper output and revenue from the sale of copper, with the index for 2010 set at 100. In 2017, Zambia’s central bank cut commercial bank lending. This reduced investment and household borrowing. Government spending increased more slowly and some cuts were made to government spending on training.