Paper short abstract:

This paper examines a century of changing occupational structures in Zambia and patterns of economic growth, and aims to relate this to wider dynamics in central Africa.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines a century of changing occupational structures in Zambia and patterns of economic growth, and aims to relate this to wider dynamics in central Africa. Much of the existing literature assumes that Zambia's mineral-led economic growth produced a predominately urbanised economy distinct from economies in Malawi, where agriculture dominated, or Zimbabwe, which experienced broader-based development. These assumptions will be tested using data from a century of censuses, labour force surveys, and company sources on the numbers of people employed in different occupations and the estimated proportions employed in primary, secondary, or tertiary sectors.

These sources are extremely patchy in the earlier twentieth-century but improve substantially following the Second World War when colonial censuses began to tabulate a district-level breakdown of the numbers employed in different occupations. Large employers in the mining industry also retained detailed employment records from the 1940s until the 1990s. Data derived from these sources on Zambia will be compared with work already done on occupational structures in Malawi and Zimbabwe to address the question: Did a distinct national economy develop in Zambia, or is it better understood in a regional framework?