By Brian Matambo | Lusaka, Zambia

So, I was reading social media posts by former Republican Vice President Dr. Nevers Mumba, as well as Dickson Jere, the former press aide to late President Rupiah Banda. Both are in praise of the now widely reported development that Zambia will accept tax payments from Chinese companies in yuan.

With all due respect, I do not see what there is to get excited about. And the reasons are very simple, yet fundamental.

The excitement assumes that the form in which tax is paid is the issue. It is not. The real issue is how much tax is collected and whether it bears any meaningful relationship to the value being extracted from the ground.

Copper prices today are higher than they were in 2021. Then, a metric tonne traded between roughly US$7,900 and US$11,000. Today it is around US$12,600. If higher copper prices were translating into national benefit, the signs would be obvious. The currency would be firmer. Fiscal pressure would be easing. The cost of living would be responding. None of this is happening.

In 2021, the Kwacha traded between about K16.72 and K21.43 to the dollar. Today it is around K22.06. Copper has climbed. The Kwacha has not. That divergence tells you everything you need to know. Zambia is not capturing the upside of its own resource.

This is because Zambia does not own the mines in any meaningful sense. What the country earns from copper comes largely through taxes and royalties, not through profits. The bulk of the value created by higher prices accrues to foreign owners and offshore balance sheets. Zambia receives a narrow stream while the river flows elsewhere.

Against that reality, the debate about whether taxes are paid in dollars or yuan is a distraction. The currency of collection does not change the structure of extraction. It does not increase ownership. It does not expand profit capture. It merely alters the route through which a limited amount of value passes.

Yes, accepting taxes in yuan may reduce conversion costs. Yes, it may ease pressure on dollar reserves. Yes, it may marginally lower the cost of servicing Chinese debt. These are administrative efficiencies. They are not economic breakthroughs.

A country does not become prosperous by optimising how it collects a small share of someone else’s wealth. It becomes prosperous by owning the asset that generates the wealth in the first place.

The focus, therefore, should not be on the novelty of collecting taxes in Chinese currency. It should be on whether the taxes themselves are adequate and whether Zambia’s stake in its mining sector reflects the scale and importance of the resource. On that score, there is little cause for celebration.

Until Zambia owns larger stakes in its mines, copper price increases will continue to feel abstract. The numbers will look impressive on charts, but daily life will remain unchanged. The resource will be booming, yet the country will not.

That is the discussion we should be having. Everything else is surface noise.