Hichilema wins presidential election in Zambia
Zambia is in terrible financial straits and it became the continent's first pandemic-era sovereign default in November.
CHRIS MFULA
Opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema secured a stunning landslide victory over incumbent Edgar Lungu in Zambia's presidential election.
The electoral commission said Hichilema got 2 810 777 votes against Lungu's 1 814 201, with all but one of the 156 constituencies counted.
"I therefore declare that the said Hichilema to be president of Zambia," electoral commission chairman, Esau Chulu, said in a packed results centre in the capital Lusaka.
That would make the third time that power has shifted peacefully from a ruling party to the opposition since the southern African country's independence from Britain in 1964.
Across Zambia, celebrations broke out in the streets as Hichilema's supporters wearing the red and yellow of his United Party for National Development (UPND) danced and sang, while drivers honked their horns.
Zambia is in terrible financial straits and it became the continent's first pandemic-era sovereign default in November after failing to keep up with its international debt payments.
That was owing to an explosive mix of depressed commodity prices which had pushed Zambia into recession well before the pandemic and a brutal slowdown in economic activity caused by the pandemic itself.
Hichilema, 59, a former CEO at an accounting firm before entering politics, now faces the task of trying to revive Zambia's fortunes. The economy has been buoyed only slightly by more favourable copper prices now hovering around decade highs, driven partly by the boom in electric cars. -Nampa/Reuters
Opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema secured a stunning landslide victory over incumbent Edgar Lungu in Zambia's presidential election.
The electoral commission said Hichilema got 2 810 777 votes against Lungu's 1 814 201, with all but one of the 156 constituencies counted.
"I therefore declare that the said Hichilema to be president of Zambia," electoral commission chairman, Esau Chulu, said in a packed results centre in the capital Lusaka.
That would make the third time that power has shifted peacefully from a ruling party to the opposition since the southern African country's independence from Britain in 1964.
Across Zambia, celebrations broke out in the streets as Hichilema's supporters wearing the red and yellow of his United Party for National Development (UPND) danced and sang, while drivers honked their horns.
Zambia is in terrible financial straits and it became the continent's first pandemic-era sovereign default in November after failing to keep up with its international debt payments.
That was owing to an explosive mix of depressed commodity prices which had pushed Zambia into recession well before the pandemic and a brutal slowdown in economic activity caused by the pandemic itself.
Hichilema, 59, a former CEO at an accounting firm before entering politics, now faces the task of trying to revive Zambia's fortunes. The economy has been buoyed only slightly by more favourable copper prices now hovering around decade highs, driven partly by the boom in electric cars. -Nampa/Reuters
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