🇿🇲 EXPLAINER | Mundubile’s Promises Survive Contact With the Treasury?
Election campaigns are designed to inspire hope. They are also designed to answer a more difficult question: can ambition survive arithmetic?
Over the past two weeks, Tonse Alliance presidential candidate Brian Mundubile has emerged as one of the most active voices on the campaign trail. From Kitwe to Petauke and from radio interviews to public rallies, he has unveiled a growing list of promises aimed at students, miners, civil servants, farmers, marketeers, content creators and opposition leaders.
The promises have generated excitement among supporters and criticism from opponents. But beyond the politics lies a more important question. If elected on August 13, could a Mundubile administration realistically finance and implement everything it is promising?
That question matters because governments do not govern from campaign platforms. They govern from budgets.
One of the most widely discussed proposals is the promise to increase student meal allowances to K5,000 per month while simultaneously cancelling outstanding student loans. The political appeal is obvious. Students represent one of the country’s largest and most vocal constituencies. The fiscal reality is more complicated. Thousands of students currently benefit from government-supported higher education financing. Raising allowances significantly while writing off existing loan obligations would require billions of kwacha over a five-year period. The proposal may be popular, but voters are entitled to ask where the money would come from and whether the Treasury could sustain such commitments alongside free education, health services and infrastructure spending.
Civil servants have also been promised debt swaps and improved remuneration. Public sector workers remain an important voting bloc, particularly in urban areas. Yet debt relief programmes do not eliminate debt. Someone ultimately absorbs the cost. In most cases, that burden falls on either taxpayers, government borrowing or financial institutions. The key policy question is not whether civil servants deserve support. It is how such support would be financed without expanding fiscal deficits or increasing public debt.
The mining sector has become another centrepiece of the campaign. Mundubile has promised to return mining dumpsites such as Senseli and Kikonge to Jerabos and increase local participation in mining contracts. The proposal speaks directly to long-standing frustrations among unemployed youth and small-scale miners on the Copperbelt. Politically, it is an attractive message. Economically, it presents a balancing act. Zambia’s mining industry operates within regulatory, environmental and investment frameworks designed to attract capital while protecting public resources. Expanding local participation is achievable. Doing so while maintaining investor confidence and regulatory order requires careful policy design rather than campaign rhetoric alone.
Agriculture provides perhaps the most interesting example. During rallies in Eastern Province, Mundubile proposed the introduction of commercial grain-drying technologies to allow farmers to sell maize earlier and reduce post-harvest losses. Unlike some campaign promises, this proposal is grounded in technologies already used across commercial agriculture globally. Industrial drying systems exist. They work. The challenge is scale. Deploying such infrastructure across Zambia’s farming regions would require substantial investment, logistics planning, maintenance systems and energy supply. The idea is not unrealistic. The implementation challenge is enormous.
Other promises raise even more fundamental questions. A Ministry of Chiefs. A Ministry of Digital Economy. State security for opposition leaders. A youth employment desk at State House. Expanded welfare programmes. Increased support for content creators. Each proposal can be defended individually. Collectively, however, they imply a larger government structure, additional public expenditure and new administrative obligations.
The central issue is not whether these ideas are good or bad. It is whether they have been costed.
Modern elections are increasingly won on credibility rather than creativity. Voters want to know not only what a candidate plans to do, but how they intend to pay for it. Zambia has only recently emerged from a painful debt restructuring process. The government remains under pressure to balance public expectations with fiscal discipline. Any incoming administration, whether UPND or Tonse Alliance, would inherit the same Treasury, the same revenue limitations and the same economic constraints.
This is where manifestos become important. Manifestos are supposed to convert political aspirations into policy frameworks. They provide financing strategies, implementation timelines and measurable targets. Campaign rallies often generate headlines. Budgets determine outcomes.
Some of Mundubile’s proposals are potentially achievable. Others would require significant borrowing, revenue growth or spending cuts elsewhere. Several would need legislative changes. A few may prove difficult to implement within a single five-year term. That does not automatically invalidate them. It simply means they deserve scrutiny.
The purpose of democratic elections is not to reward the loudest promises. It is to evaluate the most credible plans.
As Zambia’s campaign enters a more competitive phase, voters should continue asking the same question of every candidate, regardless of party affiliation:
Not what are you promising? But how will you pay for it? Because every promise eventually arrives at the same destination.
The Treasury.
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© The People’s Brief | Francine Lilu