Year Ending 2025
By Victor PM Nyasulu
As we draw the curtain on 2025, I extend warm festive greetings and best wishes for a prosperous 2026 to all my readers.
The year 2025 holds special significance for me. It marked the birth of this All Things MSMEs! column in the Daily Revelation Zambia newspaper. I am deeply grateful to the Editor-in-Chief and the Daily Revelation Newspaper as an organisation for the opportunity to consistently engage readers through more than twenty-five articles dedicated to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs)—the backbone of Zambia’s economy.
Over the course of the year, this column examined a wide spectrum of issues critical to MSME success. These included working capital management, government support mechanisms, Corporate Social Investment (CSI), the ten pillars of the Law on MSME Success Foundations (LMSF), and reflections from the 2025 MSMEs and Cooperatives Indaba. Each topic sought not merely to inform, but to provoke thought and action among entrepreneurs, policymakers, and financiers alike.
As is often the case in Zambia, 2025 was characterised by encouraging rhetoric around MSMEs. There were announcements of dedicated funding, goodwill messages from both State House and the Ministry responsible for MSMEs, and renewed interest from the banking sector through MSME-targeted financial products. These developments are welcome and necessary.
Yet, as we enter 2026, the responsibility for success ultimately rests with individual MSME promoters. Entrepreneurs must deliberately assess the enabling environment, identify opportunities within it, and pursue strategic paths that convert policy goodwill into tangible enterprise growth.
Throughout this series, I have consistently emphasised the need to build MSMEs not merely for survival, but for growth that culminates in enduring and inspirational legacy. Many Zambians quietly wish that earlier generations of local enterprises had scaled beyond modest success into institutions of national and regional influence—comparable to Trade Kings, Professional Insurance, UNILUS, Rhodes Park, and others in that class.
Zambia has been a copper-producing territory for nearly a century. Despite this long history, it remains striking that indigenous Zambians are still largely absent as dominant players in large-scale copper mining and mineral value chains. This reality compels us to ask difficult but necessary questions about ownership, ambition, and strategic positioning.
My call for MSMEs built for “huge Zambian legacy” is therefore intentional. It is about inspiring, through consistent thought leadership and literature, the next generation of Zambian entrepreneurs to think globally while acting locally. It is about changing how the world perceives Zambian enterprise—not merely as consumers or labour providers, but as owners, innovators, and investors.
Zambian Local Domestic Investors (Z-LDIs) must rapidly graduate into Zambian Foreign Direct Investors (Z-FDIs). The nation needs hundreds—indeed thousands—of purely Zambian-owned enterprises scaling into mineral-linked industries and related value chains.
Importantly, Zambia now sits on critical minerals whose strategic value may rival the power oil once commanded. Global indicators suggest copper prices are poised for unprecedented growth. The raw materials have always been here. The internet has democratised access to technical, financial, and managerial knowledge.
What, then, truly prevents Zambia from achieving Widespread and Inclusive Prosperity?
As we step into 2026, this question should confront every MSME promoter, policymaker, and financier committed to Zambia’s economic transformation.
See you first Monday of April, 2026, Deo Volenti-DV!
Napita Mukwai!________________________________________________________________The Author, Victor PM Nyasulu is contactable on +260 955 746 997 & vpmn69@gmail.com
