Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Hakainde Hichilema
born 1962
Accountant and cattle farmer who became president at the sixth attempt
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Zambia Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
He ran two international accountancy firms in Zambia before politics, stood for president five times without winning, and won on the sixth.
Hakainde Hichilema herded cattle as a boy in Monze and walked to school barefoot, took an economics degree at the University of Zambia and an MBA in Birmingham, and became chief executive of Coopers and Lybrand in Zambia and then of Grant Thornton — running the local arm of two international accountancy firms before he was forty, at a period when the Zambian state was privatising most of the economy and he was advising on it.
He took over the United Party for National Development in 2006 and stood for president in 2006, 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2018. He lost every time, twice by margins of well under two per cent, and each defeat was disputed.
He was arrested and charged with treason in 2017 after his convoy failed to give way to the presidential motorcade — a capital offence — and held for four months, including in conditions his lawyers described as degrading, before international pressure secured the withdrawal of the charge.
In August 2021 he won at the sixth attempt, defeating the incumbent Edgar Lungu by nearly a million votes on a very high turnout driven by young Zambians. It was the third time in Zambia's history that an opposition candidate had unseated a sitting president, and the transfer was peaceful. His government inherited a country in sovereign default and negotiated the debt restructuring that followed.
He took over the United Party for National Development in 2006 and stood for president in 2006, 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2018. He lost every time, twice by margins of well under two per cent, and each defeat was disputed.
He was arrested and charged with treason in 2017 after his convoy failed to give way to the presidential motorcade — a capital offence — and held for four months, including in conditions his lawyers described as degrading, before international pressure secured the withdrawal of the charge.
In August 2021 he won at the sixth attempt, defeating the incumbent Edgar Lungu by nearly a million votes on a very high turnout driven by young Zambians. It was the third time in Zambia's history that an opposition candidate had unseated a sitting president, and the transfer was peaceful. His government inherited a country in sovereign default and negotiated the debt restructuring that followed.
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