The Bridge Consortium

Thank you so much Ambassador Chibamba Kanyama for hosting us. We look forward to further engagements 🇿🇲🇺🇸🙏🙏🙏

A few weeks ago, Gaius King ( Founder of “The Bridge Consortium”) presented at Zambia’s largest property conference on the topic, “Leveraging Border Cities for Sustainable Economic Development”

We, later on joined an astute panel represented by:

1. One of Zambia's finest veteran architects Dr Francis Ndilila - Principal Architect, Ndilila Architects, and Project Managers
2. Mwanda Phiri: Africa Lead - Chatter Cities Institute
3. Simon Gouweloos: Senior Transactor and Team leader: Real Estate Finance, Standard Bank

The panel was moderated by Zambia's property and real estate realtors representative Mr Tim Ware, MD Knight Frank.

Key Highlights:

* Zambia has a strategic prime geo-economic location in Sub-saharan Africa, with land linked to 8 African countries - Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, and water linked to Rwanda, and Burundi.

* Opening up of the Lobito Corridor is of utmost importance as a trade enabler for the region, particularly between Zambia, DR Congo, Angola, and Central Africa at large. The corridor offers up to 1,146 km shorter haulage as an alternative route to the Walvis Bay Corridor and South African ports.

* The Lobito Corridor provides an important gateway for industrial and agricultural goods produced in Central and Southern Africa, and the Bridge Consortium Smart (Green) Border City is positioned to become a conduit that will enable Zambia especially the North Western part benefit from the economic and developmental benefits of the corridor.

* The corridor offers shorter and hence faster access for exports to and imports from Europe, South & North America and supporting this corridor with critical infrastructure such as well organised sustainable cities and farm blocks is of paramount economic importance.

*Shared insights and examples on how well organised border cities such as Mongolia-China, Elpaso on US-Mexico Border, Vancouver and El-savado have driven growth in trade and economic development of respective countries and border cities.

* Bringing it home, Africa has ten national capitals that are located at a national border: Bangui, Brazzaville, Bujumbura, Gaborone, Kinshasa, Lomé, Maseru, Mbabane, Ndjamena & Porto Novo.

* We concluded by pointing out on the social and economical effects/impacts of the Gabriel King Smart City that will be located long the Lobito Corridor. Chief among them is that the City will serve as an access point for trade between Zambia, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Improving existing border cities and building new cities is importance for the foreseeable future.

Many thanks to all who have been a part of this journey.

Tim Ware, Managing Director Zambia, Knight Frank, Mwanda Phiri (Africa Lead Chatter Cities Institute), Simon Gouweloos (Senior Transactor and Team leader: Real Estate Finance, Standard Bank) and Dr. Francis Ndilila (Principal Architect, Ndilila Architects and Project Managers).

Planting with a Purpose: Indigenous trees, fruit trees and bee keeping

At the Silta Nursery Plantation, we Plant with a Purpose. Our focus is to replenish the forest plantations with not only indigenous forest trees, but also indigenous fruit trees such and other organic fruit trees to provide food for our local people.

So far, we have over 3,000 indigenous trees and fruit trees. We are preparing to plant over 130,000 trees this year.

We believe in creating and getting value from the forest in a sustainable manner. As a source of livelihood for our local communities in Manyinga, we have partnered with locals to undertake bee keeping & tree planting.

Our target is to populate 1,200 beehives, with a beehive production of 100 beehives per month.

Bee keeping in these forest will also serve the purpose of preventing deforestation.

Soil is the foundation of our agricultural systems, and is essential for growing healthy crops. Climate change is impacting the health of our soils, making it more difficult to grow crops and sustain our agricultural systems.

However, there are ways to help mitigate the effects of climate change on our soils. By implementing sustainable farming practices, such as crop rotation, cover cropping, and no-till farming, we can help protect our soils and ensure that they remain healthy and productive for years to come.

We believe that with the right strategies, we can ensure that our soils remain a reliable source of food, even in the face of a changing climate.