Summit For Democracy Gets Underway In Lusaka

It was a great honour and privilege to have chaired the virtual plenary session on "Democracy Delivering Strong Institutions", at the 'Summit for Democracy', at the KK Wing of the Mulungushi International Conference this afternoon.

We were gratified too, to have shared this important live platform with Their Excellencies Prime Ministers Philip Davis, Katrin Jakobsdottir, Ulf Kristersson, and Rishi Sunak, of the Bahamas, Iceland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, respectively.

Others were Their Excellencies, Presidents Gustavo Petro, Emmanuel Macron, Vjosa Osmani, and Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh of Colombia, France, Kosovo and Mongolia, respectively.

We thanked the leaders for taking time to share their thoughts about democratic values and how democracies deliver for their citizens, and further how well suited the process is, in addressing some of the World's most pressing challenges.

We proposed to the plenary session as we discussed the foundations of democracy, to explore the concept whether democracies needed strong leaders or strong institutions, or indeed a combination of both.

We reaffirmed our views that for a country to be democratic, its citizens should choose their leaders through periodic elections that are free and fair. We demonstrated that it is possible in Africa to democratically and peacefully transition power from different administrations, and gave Zambia's as an example, where we have had 7 Presidents from 4 different political parties, over a period of 57 years.

Hakainde Hichilema,

President of the Republic of Zambia.