Two years into its decade-long transformation blueprint, the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) is pointing to concrete results.
By Features Writer
There is a phrase that has quietly become the operating philosophy inside the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC): Plan long, deliver now. It sounds deceptively simple. But inside an organisation that oversees 36 State-owned Enterprises spanning 12 sectors of the economy, translating that philosophy into measurable results requires something far harder – the patient, unglamorous work of institutional transformation.
With the halfway mark of its first phase in sight, the IDC’s 2024–2033 Transformation Strategy is beginning to yield results that are both structural and tangible. Subsidiary boards have been reconstituted. Long-term plans stretching 15 years into the future have been drawn up and stress tested. A petroleum refinery has broken ground. Dividend inflows are rising. And the architecture for a Wealth Fund is beginning to take shape.
“We are in the second year of our implementation, and we are pleased with what we have achieved so far,” says IDC Group CEO Mr Cornwell Muleya, speaking with the measured confidence of someone who has spent the past 24 months grinding against the grain of institutional inertia. “Each of the pillars we set ourselves has moved.”
Fixing the foundation
The first act of the IDC’s transformation was arguably the least visible to outsiders but the most consequential: overhauling the governance of the companies it holds. Before any refinery could be built or any mine developed, the IDC needed its entities to be run by the right people, with the right frameworks, asking the right questions about the long term.
“We started with the governance structures; improving the boards and management of these entities,” Mr. Muleya explains. “We completed that within the first year of the programme.” This was not merely a personnel exercise. It was a cultural intervention. Accompanying the restructured boards was a mandate for every entity in the Group to develop 10–15-year strategic plans, a requirement that every single entity has now met.
The result is a Group where, for the first time, all entities are planning in structured five-year phases across a 15-year horizon. “That has been critical to the change of thinking in terms of framework for most of our governance structures,” he says. “We asked everybody to go into long-term planning, and everybody has delivered on that requirement.”
Steel in the Ground: The Refinery
If governance reform is the IDC’s invisible architecture, the petroleum refinery that IDC is establishing with Chinese firm Fujian XiangXin Corporation is its most visible statement of intent. The project, which held its groundbreaking ceremony in April represents the centrepiece of the Corporation’s new-projects pillar, and arguably the boldest industrial bet Zambia has made in a long while.
Zambia currently imports virtually all its refined petroleum products, leaving the country exposed to global price volatility and supply disruptions. The refinery is designed to change that calculus, not just for the fuel pumps Zambians fill up at, but across the entire downstream economy that depends on reliable, affordable energy inputs.
“The project seeks to bring energy security not only in the petroleum sector but also in downstream industries, which will cut across the entire economy,” Mr Muleya says. With construction now commencing, the IDC is targeting first product within 12-15 months, a timeline that, if met, would deliver tangible relief to consumers and businesses alike.
The macroeconomic implications extend further still. Lower fuel costs reduce the cost of production across sectors from agriculture to manufacturing. Stable hydrocarbon pricing reduces inflationary pressure. Foreign exchange earnings from refined product exports would reduce Zambia’s import bill.
Dividends Rising: The Performance Turnaround
Alongside new projects, the IDC’s transformation has focused on what it calls performance-based returns, the idea that existing entities should not merely operate but generate value that flows back to the Zambian state and, ultimately, to citizens.
Each entity in the IDC group now operates under a performance contract. The results, Mr Muleya says, are showing.
“During this period we have seen many more companies give us dividends. They are bringing a return to the shareholders and to the people of Zambia. We are very pleased.” Companies like Zamcargo and Mulungushi International Conference centre have recently delivered dividends for the first time.
Building Tomorrow: The Wealth Fund
Perhaps the most forward-looking element of the IDC’s strategy is the one with the longest time horizon: the creation of a Wealth Fund. Mr Muleya says seed capital has been committed by the IDC, and structural reform discussions with the broader Government are underway to determine the mechanisms through which returns from state assets will flow into the fund on an ongoing basis.
The concept places Zambia in the company of nations – from Norway to Botswana – that have used resource revenues and state enterprise returns to build intergenerational financial cushions.
“The returns we are getting going into the wealth fund means that we improve lives and raise standards of living in the country,” Mr Muleya says.
The fund is not merely a savings mechanism. It is, in Mr Muleya’s framing, the capstone of a model in which parastatal performance is harnessed for long-term national development, a direct echo of the Asian development model that the IDC has consciously studied and adapted.
The Next Phase: Mines, Farms and the Grid
With the first phase of the strategy gaining traction, the IDC’s gaze is already extending to the next set of strategic priorities. Four sectors dominate the agenda.
In mining, the IDC is pursuing new mine development through its structures with Industrial Resources Limited and through strategic partnerships. Government geophysical mapping exercises have produced a set of licences that the IDC is now moving to develop. Separately, the Corporation is working with Government on a gold aggregation programme in designated areas, partnering with small-scale miners to introduce safer technology and formalise purchasing channels, a model that seeks to bring artisanal mining into the formal economy.
In agriculture, the focus is on expanding production and tackling food security – responding to the imperative to grow more crops for local self-sufficiency and regional markets, as well as building the agro-industrial value chains that can sustain higher prices and greater employment.
In energy, the IDC is working with ZESCO on a new round of power purchase agreements designed to expand both generation capacity and the reliability of the transmission network. The objective is not merely more megawatts but a grid that can move power from generators to end users dependably, a prerequisite for industrialisation at scale.
“We see ourselves at the core of industry in Zambia,” Muleya says. “If we don’t deliver, then who will deliver in terms of expanding our economy?” It is a rhetorical question. But it doubles as a statement of purpose that the IDC is now, two years in, beginning to answer with evidence.
A partnership Model
One feature of the IDC’s current trajectory that Mr Muleya is keen to highlight is that it has not been a solo endeavour. Support has come from Government, and crucially, from international partners who have responded to the investment environment the strategy is helping to create.
Two years into a 10-year journey, the IDC is at that delicate inflection point where early results must be consolidated into durable momentum. The governance foundations are laid. The refinery is rising from the ground. The performance contracts are yielding dividends. The Wealth Fund is shaping up.
What the next phase demands is a step-change in the scale and complexity of what the Corporation is being asked to deliver. But if the first two years have demonstrated anything, it is that the IDC has found, in Mr Muleya’s words, the one thing any transformation ultimately requires: the conviction to begin.