Lusaka is the capital of Zambia and, for most travellers, the gateway to the country. It is a practical, sprawling and fast-growing city, with tree-lined avenues, modern shopping centres, bustling markets and a low-key but genuine cultural life. It doesn't have the big monuments of other African capitals, but it offers a real first taste of urban Zambia: relaxed, friendly and safe by the region's standards.
Founded as a simple railway siding in the early 20th century, Lusaka became the capital of what was then Northern Rhodesia in 1935 because of its central location, and since 1964 it has been the capital of independent Zambia. Today it is home to political power, the embassies, the university and a large part of the country's economy. Its sights — museums, a cultural village, craft markets, an elephant orphanage — can be enjoyed in one or two unhurried days.
This guide takes a practical look at Lusaka: what to see in the city, where to buy crafts, how to get around safely, where to eat well and how to use the capital as a logistical base for flying to Livingstone, South Luangwa or Zambia's other destinations. More than a destination in itself, Lusaka is the comfortable, well-connected starting point for almost any trip around the country.
Lusaka began in the early 20th century as a small settlement beside the railway line, on the land of the local chief Lusaaka, from whom it took its name. Its central position on the plateau led the British to choose it in 1935 as the new capital of Northern Rhodesia, replacing Livingstone on the border. With Zambia's independence in 1964, Lusaka became the capital of the new country under the leadership of Kenneth Kaunda, and it has since grown into a metropolis of millions. The full story is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Zambia's administrative heart: from a village by the railway to national capital, surrounded by the fertile Kafue plains where lechwe antelopes graze.
Read the history of Lusaka and the centre →If you book from here we earn a commission and you pay no more. Prices and availability come from Civitatis.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Lusaka's origins are humble. Before the Europeans arrived, the site was an area of villages belonging to Soli-speaking peoples, on a central plateau with a mild climate. The city's name comes from a local chief, Lusaaka, whose village stood near today's city centre. At the end of the 19th century, the region was part of the vast territory that came under the control of Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company.
What transformed the place was the railway, as in so many cities in southern Africa. In the early 20th century, the line coming up from the south reached the area after crossing the Zambezi on the bridge at the falls in 1905. Around 1905, a small settlement grew up beside the tracks. Lusaka began as a railway station and supply point in the middle of the plateau, surrounded by the farms of European settlers who came for the good land.
For its first few decades, Lusaka was just a small town. Livingstone, the capital of Northern Rhodesia in the south of the territory, mattered far more, and so did the copper-mining towns that were starting to grow in the north. Nothing suggested that this modest railway junction would one day become a country's capital.
In the early 1930s, the British authorities in Northern Rhodesia made a key decision. They would move the capital away from Livingstone, which sat at the far southern edge right on the border, to a more central place that made it easier to run the vast territory. They chose Lusaka because it sat in the heart of the plateau, had a healthy climate and a high altitude, and was a rail and road hub.
In 1935, Lusaka was officially proclaimed the capital of Northern Rhodesia. A new administrative city was designed and built, with government buildings, wide avenues and residential neighbourhoods, partly following the town-planning ideas of the time (there was even talk of a 'garden city'). The move boosted the population and economic activity. Even so, the city, like the whole colony, was shaped by racial segregation between Europeans and Africans.
Over the following decades, Lusaka grew as the centre of colonial power. The territory's economy revolved around copper from the Copperbelt in the north, but political and administrative decisions were made in the capital. The city also became a focus of growing African political activity, which after the Second World War would start to demand an end to British rule.
After years of political struggle and nationalist mobilisation, Northern Rhodesia became independent from the United Kingdom on 24 October 1964. That day the Republic of Zambia was born, with Lusaka as its capital. Kenneth Kaunda, leader of the independence movement, became the country's first president and held the post for 27 years. Independence came peacefully, without the war that devastated other territories in the region.
Lusaka became the political centre of a sovereign country. Under Kaunda it was the seat of a socialist-leaning state that nationalised much of the economy, above all copper mining. The city grew quickly as migrants arrived from the countryside and the mining areas, and it became a symbol of modern, independent Zambia. Kaunda made Lusaka a centre of pan-Africanism and of the struggle against apartheid and colonialism in southern Africa, and it hosted liberation movements from neighbouring countries.
However, the fall in copper prices in the 1970s and 1980s hit the economy hard, and the city suffered shortages, debt and stagnation. Fast urban growth without enough resources produced large informal settlements (compounds) on the outskirts. By the end of the 20th century, Lusaka was a capital of sharp contrasts between wealthy and working-class neighbourhoods.
In 1991, after years of one-party rule, Zambia went through a democratic transition. Kenneth Kaunda accepted multi-party elections and lost to Frederick Chiluba, and the peaceful handover of power was praised as an example for the continent. The new government opened up the economy, privatised companies and turned the country towards the market. As the capital, Lusaka was where these political and economic changes played out.
In the decades that followed, and especially once copper prices recovered from the 2000s on, the city entered a new phase of growth and modernisation. Shopping centres, office buildings, international hotel chains, private universities and new residential neighbourhoods appeared. The urban middle class grew, and so did spending, restaurants, malls and cultural life. Still, poverty and inequality persisted, and still persist, in the large compounds.
Today Lusaka is a metropolis of several million people and one of the fastest-growing capitals in southern Africa. It faces the usual challenges of that pace: traffic, sprawl and pressure on services. It is the political, economic and logistical heart of Zambia, the country's gateway and the starting point for trips to the falls and the great national parks. Lusaka went from a village beside the tracks to a nation's capital, and its history is largely the history of modern Zambia.
