ZAMBIA · POLITICS

The Zambia election result is settled: the electoral commission declared President Hakainde Hichilema the winner in the early hours of Tuesday, with about 60 percent of the vote and no runoff required. What is not settled is the opposition’s response, or the copper arithmetic on which the next five years depend.

Lusaka, where the electoral commission declared the result in the early hours of Tuesday. (Photo: Internet reproduction)

What the Zambia election result actually says

Hichilema needed more than half the vote to avoid a second round, and he got it. The commission put him on 2,965,326 votes, or about 60 percent, against 1,856,217 for Brian Mundubile.

That is a wider margin than 2021, when he first unseated the late Edgar Lungu. It also arrives with a caveat worth stating plainly.

The commission declared the result after completing the count across all 226 constituencies, and described the figures as final.

Turnout was about 57 percent of 8,786,300 registered voters. Fourteen candidates were nominated, one was ruled ineligible on the eve of the poll, and no one else came close. Turnout fell sharply: 57.23 percent against 70.61 percent in 2021.

A count that was interrupted, and an opposition that has not conceded

The week was not calm. On election night, eleven people including several senior opposition figures were arrested in a raid that involved an exchange of gunfire, an incident widely reported at the time. The government said the raid targeted militia activity and that those held were found with military-grade weapons; the opposition rejects that account.

The next day the commission suspended counting altogether, citing reported violence and stolen ballot papers, before resuming.

Mundubile has since said publicly that results forms may have been interfered with, and has asked for an independent investigation. His Tonse-Pamodzi Alliance said on 18 August that it is going to the Constitutional Court, though no petition had been filed at the time of writing.

Zambia’s constitution gives a losing candidate seven days from the declaration to bring a challenge, and requires the Constitutional Court to hear the petition within fourteen days of filing. That clock started this week.

For anyone watching from outside, the useful thing is not the rhetoric but the calendar. A petition filed inside the window would put a judicial deadline on the political story; silence would close it.

Why the bond market has been watching Lusaka

Zambia has been one of the more rewarding places to have been invested this year, and the reason is often reported imprecisely. It is the local-currency market that has produced the returns.

Kwacha-denominated government bonds had earned roughly 36 percent in US dollar terms as of late July, on Bloomberg’s numbers, a figure that combines a strong coupon with a strengthening currency.

The kwacha is up about 20 percent against the dollar this year, on Bloomberg’s figures as of late July. It briefly topped global currency rankings early in 2026 before slipping behind the Russian rouble by mid-year.

Zambia’s restructured hard-currency debt is a separate story with its own path. The country completed the mandatory exchange of its US$3 billion of outstanding Eurobonds on 12 June 2024, with bondholders forgoing about US$840 million.

None of that is a reward for the election itself. It is a reward for the direction of travel since the default, and the election result mainly removes a reason to sell.

Copper is the promise, and the shortfall is the problem

Everything in Zambia’s investment case eventually returns to copper. The government’s stated strategy is three million tonnes of annual production by 2031, a target set out by the ministry of mines and mineral development.

Actual output in 2025 was about 890,000 tonnes. That was growth of roughly 8 percent, and it was also a clear miss against the interim target of one million tonnes.

The gap matters because the 2031 number is the basis on which Zambia is being lent money, courted by mining investors and discussed as a future supplier to the energy transition. Missing the first waypoint by more than 10 percent is a data point, not a crisis, but it is a data point.

What closes the gap is new tonnage from projects rather than incremental gains at existing mines. That, in turn, depends on power, on rail capacity to the Atlantic, and on a tax regime investors believe will still be there in a decade.

The missing programme, and what to watch next

Zambia does not currently have an International Monetary Fund programme. The 38-month extended credit facility, approved in August 2022 and eventually worth about US$1.7 billion, completed its sixth and final review on 27 January 2026 and then expired.

The finance ministry has said it wants a successor arrangement. Nothing has been approved, and a new programme would be negotiated by a government that has just been handed a fresh mandate and, with it, fresh spending expectations.

That is the tension worth holding onto. A decisive win removes political risk and adds fiscal risk at the same moment.

The three things to watch over the next fortnight are simple. Whether Mundubile files inside the seven-day window, whether the commission publishes a fully certified final count, and whether Lusaka opens formal talks with the Fund.

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