Zambia

Zambia is a country in Africa.

It has no sea. Most of it is high, flat land with trees. A big river called the Zambezi flows along the south. The capital city is Lusaka.

Zambia is a landlocked country in south-central Africa. Most of it sits on a high plateau, 900 to 1,500 meters above the sea, cut by deep river valleys. It is named after the Zambezi River, which drains almost the whole country.

On a map, Zambia looks a little like a butterfly, because a wedge of land from its neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, pushes deep into it. It has eight neighbors. About 22 million people lived there in 2025, and many of them live along a railway that links the capital, Lusaka, with the mining towns of the Copperbelt.

Zambia is a landlocked state in south-central Africa on the high plateau of the region, 900–1,500 m above sea level, dissected by river valleys and rift troughs. It takes its name from the Zambezi, which drains all but a small northern part of the country. The Pedicle, a wedge of Congolese territory cutting deep into Zambia, gives it a distinctive butterfly shape.

Large parts of the country are thinly populated. Well over half the people live along the Line of Rail, the railway linking the Copperbelt with Lusaka and the border town of Livingstone. The World Bank put the population at 21,913,874 in 2025. Some two-fifths of Zambia's land is under some form of protection, and more than one-tenth is forest reserve.

Lusaka is the capital city.

In the north, people dig copper out of the ground. In the south is Victoria Falls, where a wide river falls down a deep crack. Its spray looks like smoke.

Lusaka, the capital, is the city where the most people live: about one in ten people in Zambia. North of it is the Copperbelt, the center of mining and industry.

In the south, the town of Livingstone stands near Victoria Falls, called Mosi-oa-Tunya. There the Zambezi drops into a deep gorge along a waterfall about 1.7 kilometers wide, and its spray can be seen 30 kilometers away. Downstream, Kariba Dam holds back Lake Kariba, a giant lake made by people that forms part of the border with Zimbabwe.

Lusaka holds the greatest concentration of people, about one-tenth of the population, and more than one-tenth live in the Copperbelt to its north, the country's industrial heart. Livingstone, near the falls, was the capital of Northern Rhodesia when the territory was formed in 1911.

Mosi-oa-Tunya / Victoria Falls, shared with Zimbabwe and inscribed by UNESCO in 1989, is about 1,708 m wide, averages 100 m deep with a deepest point of 108 m, and stands about 915 m above sea level; spray can be seen 30 km away on the Lusaka road. Below it the river has cut eight gorges in layered basalt. Lake Kariba, formed by the Kariba Dam (built in 1959) in a gorge on the middle Zambezi, now forms part of the border with Zimbabwe; a 600-megawatt power station on the Zambian side was completed in 1977, and another of 900 megawatts in the Kafue Gorge south of Lusaka.

Zambia has three seasons.

It is warm and rainy from November to April. Then it is cool and dry. Then it is hot and dry, until the rain comes back.

Zambia's highest land is in the east, where the Mafinga Hills rise to more than 2,100 meters. Deep valleys called rifts cut across the plateau; the Luangwa River flows along the bottom of one of them.

Zambia has three seasons. The warm, wet season lasts from November to April, with the heaviest rain in December and January. The cool, dry season runs from May to August, and July is usually the coldest month. Then comes the hot, dry season in September and October. Much of the country is covered by miombo woodland, small trees with grass beneath.

The plateau slopes generally southwest, yet the Zambezi turns east to the Indian Ocean. The Nyika Plateau on the Malawi border exceeds 1,800 m and the Mafinga Hills top 2,100 m; Lake Tanganyika lies about 600 m below the plateau, and the Luangwa occupies the largest rift trough. The continental divide between the Congo basin, draining to the Atlantic, and the Zambezi basin, draining to the Indian Ocean, runs along the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Bangweulu Swamps and Kafue Flats are wetlands of international importance.

Rain follows the intertropical convergence zone: the warm wet season (November to April) brings most of the year's precipitation, the cool dry season (May to August) brings occasional frost, and the hot dry season (September to October) usually holds the hottest month. Annual rainfall is under 800 mm in the driest region and over 1,000 mm in the wettest, sometimes above 1,400 mm in the northeast. Miombo woodland of Brachystegia and Julbernardia covers the plateau, with mopane woodland and baobabs in the hot Zambezi and Luangwa valleys and grassy dambos on the plateau.

Fish eagles fly over Zambia's lakes and rivers.

Crocodiles rest by the water. Big shoebill birds live in a swamp. Elephants live in the national parks.

Zambia has many kinds of mammals, and big herds gather on the floodplains of its national parks, especially in the Luangwa and Kafue valleys. Poaching has made elephants much rarer, and rhinos almost disappeared. The African fish eagle, Zambia's national emblem, is common over large lakes and rivers, and crocodiles, tortoises and many lizards and snakes live there too.

In the Bangweulu Wetlands, people from nearby villages are paid to guard the nests of shoebills, large and unusual-looking wetland birds, day and night during the nesting season.

Britannica notes large concentrations of mammals on the major floodplains, particularly in the national parks of the Luangwa and Kafue valleys, but also depletion outside the parks and serious poaching within them: the illegal rhino-horn trade virtually eliminated the rhinoceros, and ivory poaching greatly reduced elephant numbers. The African fish eagle, Zambia's national emblem, is common on large stretches of open water; reptiles include crocodiles, tortoises and terrapins, and large termite mounds mark some landscapes.

The Bangweulu Wetlands, about 6,000 km² of papyrus swamp and floodplain, are the southern edge of the shoebill's range, with only a few hundred birds. African Parks, which manages this community-owned protected area, started a Shoebill Nest Protection Programme in 2012 that employs local community members to guard nests around the clock in the June–November nesting season, and in 2022 opened a facility to rear second chicks for release. The gorges below Victoria Falls are breeding sites for four endangered bird species.

About 22 million people live in Zambia.

People speak many languages, like Bemba and Nyanja. English is used in schools and offices. Many families grow food on farms.

Most people in Zambia speak Bantu languages. The largest group, the Bemba, live in the north, and Bemba is the most widely spoken language. Nyanja is common in the east and in Lusaka, and Tonga in the south. In the west live the Lozi people, who have a king called the litunga. English is the official language.

In the countryside, most families farm or herd animals, and some make crafts to sell. In the cities, busy markets are places to shop, eat and meet friends. Most people in Zambia are Christian.

Most Zambians speak Bantu languages of the Niger-Congo family and descend from farming and metal-using peoples who settled in the region over the past 2,000 years. The Bemba group, more than one-fifth of the population, lives in the north-central provinces, and Bemba is the most widely spoken language and the lingua franca of the Copperbelt; Nyanja (Chewa) and Tonga groups together make up more than one-fifth. Nyanja is the lingua franca of Lusaka. The Lozi of the upper Zambezi floodplain are centralized under a king, the litunga. English is the official language.

Well over half the population lives along the Line of Rail, and rural-to-urban migration has dominated since independence. Most rural Zambians farm or herd, sometimes adding seasonal craftwork; city markets are social meeting places as well as places of trade. Zambia is predominantly Christian, more than three-fourths Protestant and one-fifth Roman Catholic, while the Asian community, mostly Gujarati-speaking Indians, is mainly Hindu or Muslim.