Hichilema Challenges ICT Sector to Drive Zambia's Digital Transformation

President Hakainde Hichilema has issued a direct challenge to Zambia's technology professionals to help accelerate government delivery, warning that slow execution remains one of his greatest frustrations.

Speaking at the 2026 Information and Communications Technology Association of Zambia (ICTAZ) Tech Conference and 17th Annual General Meeting, the Head of State called on ICT professionals to build the digital infrastructure required to support Cabinet's approved 24-hour economy, an ambitious framework designed to keep banking, trade and commerce running around the clock.

"Akuna kulala," the President told delegates, there is no sleeping time. Transactions, he said, must flow continuously, with ICT platforms deepening intra-African trade under the Continental Free Trade Area and supporting Zambia's growing ambitions on the continental stage.

President Hichilema also aimed at government inefficiency, calling for a sharp reduction in workshops, travel costs and paper-based bureaucracy. Describing himself as a president who "signs the least memos," he pointed to WhatsApp messages sent from his plane as evidence that technology can replace costly, slow-moving administrative processes, freeing up savings that could instead improve conditions of service for public sector workers.

On local government, he urged councils to stop raising rates and instead deploy ICT tools to improve revenue collection, arguing that lower, efficiently collected taxes would ultimately yield more than punitive increases.

The President also called on the sector to help combat cybercrime, including financial fraud and the harassment of women online, while pledging to extend digital connectivity across all ten of Zambia's provinces following the August elections.

It was a speech that captured something essential about this moment in Zambia's development: a nation with the resources, the reform agenda and the regional ambition, now looking to its own people to build the systems that will make it all work.