Hichilema: Zambia’s Zionism-loving president and the worst choice for this historical moment

Zambia's President Hakainde Hichilema faces scrutiny as he embarks on his second term amid a global scramble for strategic minerals. With copper wielding immense influence in the technologies driving modern progress, countries like the United States, Europe, and the Gulf are keen to secure their supply chains. China, too, has long been entrenched in the continent, building infrastructure and forging relationships across Africa.

Hichilema's governance, however, seems to disregard Zambia's strategic importance, continuing his Zionist orientation despite his country's critical mineral resources.

In 2023, Hichilema visited Israel, met its president and prime minister, and signed a cooperation agreement. This relationship, described by Zambia's foreign ministry as enduring, spans trade, technology, agriculture, renewable energy, healthcare, and education. Yet, just as the conflict in Gaza escalated, Hichilema's support for Israel persisted.

In April 2025, he addressed the American Jewish Committee Global Forum in New York, where Zambia's role in the growing Africa-Israel-US relationship was celebrated. Moreover, Israel reopened its embassy in Lusaka after more than half a century, and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar identified mining as a strategic area of cooperation with Zambia.

The symbolism of this alliance is deeply troubling. Hichilema's government inherits a history of aiding liberation movements across southern Africa and now moves toward a state that could potentially cause destruction and dispossession of Palestinian life. Meanwhile, Zambia is increasingly drawn into the United States' strategic contest for African mineral wealth, exemplified by the Lobito Corridor linking Zambia's copper and cobalt belts to Angola's Atlantic coast.

Africa's history of resource extraction under foreign control remains relevant today. Despite Zambia's vast mineral wealth, poverty, unemployment, electricity insecurity, and high living costs continue to plague its people. Mining corporations, traders, foreign industries, and political elites have long enriched themselves, leaving Zambians to bear the burden of extraction without sovereignty.

The answer cannot be a faster version of the same extractive model; Zambia must use its mineral wealth to negotiate strategically with all sides, engaging Chinese infrastructure, Russian cooperation, Indian capital, Gulf investment, European markets, and American finance based on how they serve African sovereignty and industrial capacity.