Wilson Kalumba’s fresh ideas to improve Zambia’s capital city

September 3rd 2016

VIOLET MENGO

LUSAKA 

Wilson Kalumba- Lusaka City Mayor

 AS LUSAKA residents went to vote for their executive mayor in last month’s elections, of all the major contenders, you can safely say Wilson Kalumba was the least known to the average person.

This was so despite the fact that he was the ruling Patriotic Front’s (PF’s) mayoral candidate in the election.

But those who knew him, or had looked at his credentials, said he was just the type of person that the city of Lusaka needed as executive mayor.

Of course, the problems of Lusaka are well-documented, they have to do with housing, water and sanitation, management of vendors, markets and bus stations and public transport, among others.

Mr Kalumba put his name across as a candidate, promising to clean up the image of Lusaka.

He came up against the likes of former Lusaka mayor Fisho Mwale, former First Lady Maureen Mwanawasa and Elias Mpondela, whose two decade tenure at the helm of the Zambia Amateur Athletics Association is almost legendary.

But if Mr Kalumba lacked anything in name recognition, he certainly had plenty in work and professional experience.

You may want to start with the Bank of Zambia (BoZ), where he worked for 18 years. Mr Kalumba was the deputy director in the Central Bank’s supervision department, responsible for assessing the financial performance and conditions of commercial banks and the banking industry.

In doing so, he was contributing to safeguarding of depositors’ money in the banks by ensuring that banks remained financially sound and safe.

“I have deep insights for high financial performance benchmarks, with a flair for problem solving covering complex issues,” Mr Kalumba says about his experience in the financial sector.

“These include assessing proposed financial products with the overall aim of ensuring customer protection.”

While at BoZ, he represented the Central Bank on outside bodies such as appointment by Cabinet Office to chair the Contingency Planning Committee charged with the responsibility of designing the country’s financial sector contingency plan as well as member of the Licensing Committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and as chairman of Small Medium Enterprises (SME) Committee at Zambia Institute of Chartered Accountants (ZICA).

Mr Kalumba is a chartered accountant qualified under the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) from Emile Wolf College in London and a fellow member of ZICA. He holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Edinburgh Business School at Heriot –Watt University in Scotland, and is also a certified forensic accountant, a specialised designation awarded by the American College of Forensic Examiners in the United States of America (USA).
There is more; he holds a Leadership Development Programme in Strategic Financial Analysis for Business Evaluation from Harvard Business School at Harvard University.

Other certifications include being an associate member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitration Zambia branch, as well as a certified credit rating analyst by Moody’s.

Mr Kalumba is the founder and chief executive officer of Credit Rating Agency Limited (CRA), Zambia’s first ever credit rating company, that rates the credit worthiness of banks, non-corporates, insurance companies, small medium enterprises and governments.

As founder and chief executive officer of the firm, his responsibilities include providing overall leadership and direction to this relatively young company, where he is also responsible for business development and customer acquisition, developing and implementing the company’s strategic plan.
His professional and work experience does not end there though. For seven years, between 2001 and 2009, he was based at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York, USA, serving appointments by the UN Secretary Generals Kofi Anan and Ban Ki-moon, a Financial and Economic Sanctions Expert area where he was responsible for monitoring the implementation of sanctions against identified targets.

“This appointment took me around the world to engage with national authorities in order to assess the effectiveness of national measures and in the process, I developed diplomatic skills to handle sensitive matters with national governments,” he says.

“During my tenure at the UN, I developed a strong international network of heads of government departments and institutions in several countries, and locally, the network extends to CEOs and senior management of banks, private companies and government departments.

“I started my career with Pricewaterhouse, an auditing firm in 1990, but after one year, I moved to another auditing firm, Coopers & Lybrand, which I later left to join the Bank of Zambia in 1992.”
It is that work and professional taking to the capital city’s civic centre as executive mayor.

His over-arching objective is to transform Lusaka City Council into a “council that is responsive to the needs, interests and aspirations of individuals and stakeholders within communities, and seek to ensure that the council’s resources are used prudently and distributed equitably.”

On his way to the civic centre, he promised a number of initiatives that he intended to implement for the betterment of Lusaka.

Just call them fresh ideas for council business.

These include an efficient and clean public transport system; making the council construct affordable housing units; issuing municipal bonds to raise long-term finance for capital projects; construct new markets and sporting facilities in the communities; and in the short term designate market streets for vendors to operate from.

Mr Kalumba says the housing crisis is the single biggest barrier to prosperity, growth and fairness facing the people of Lusaka today. He says the city’s shortage of decent and affordable homes is causing real misery to thousands of residents, and damaging Lusaka’s competitiveness.

“In order to improve housing, the council will focus on developing high-rise apartments to cater for young families and working class. As I realise that land for such use maybe in short supply, the council may have to re-designate some of the land it already owns and bring down any structures on such land to pave way for the construction of modern high-rise apartments,” he says.

Mr Kalumba is also concerned at the fact that more than 80 percent of Lusaka residents do not have access to clean running water, and to that effect, he will attract public private partnerships (PPPs) to invest in taking piped water to areas with no running water.

“Lusaka is one of the most polluted cities. Too many of our families and friends are suffering from Lusaka’s filthy solid waste, and we need to act now. I will introduce mandatory trash bins separating biodegradable waste from non-biodegradable, ban rubbish pits in residential areas,” he says.

“I will also introduce a special tax on glass and plastic bottles to specifically raise funds required to deal with the collection and disposal of plastic and glass bottles. Working with relevant stakeholders such as businesses and consumer associations and regulators, the council will also promote PPP to set up plastic and glass recycling plants.

“I will improve drainage systems in communities by upgrading them to concrete; make sure that all the rubbish and soil removed from drainages are properly disposed of rather than being piled by the road side. There shall be all-year round cleaning of the drainage.”
Lusaka certainly needs some cleaning, if not, fresh ideas.