Listen here.Zambia just handed Hakainde Hichilema a landslide second term, and its youth have gone from 10% optimistic about the future to 55% in under six years. Paramount Group founder and Africa Youth Survey chair Ivor Ichikowitz explains why, and doesn't hold back on what it says about South Africa, where youth optimism is the lowest of the 16 countries the survey covers. His verdict on what Pretoria could learn from Lusaka: treat the country like a business, back the people who deliver, and stop giving investors reasons to speculate. Watch below..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Edited transcript of the interview.Alec Hogg (00:01): Well, we welcome back Ivor Ichikowitz. You might recall a couple of months ago we had a chat after Ivor brought out the Africa Youth Survey. We covered his background as the biggest defence manufacturer on the African continent, one of the biggest private ones in the world. That kind of attracts a lot of attention. But what I'm excited about talking to him this morning is Zambia. We've just had another election in Zambia.Hakainde Hichilema, who the BizNews tribe got to know through Mmusi Maimane, you might recall, Maimane was barred entry to Zambia under the previous leadership. And he said that was nothing compared to what Hichilema had been through, because Hichilema had been in jail, something like six times, as leader of the opposition. Eventually the Zambians voted him into power. And my goodness, what a transformation. I've got the best detail, the best information on this. But just anecdotally, I've been talking to a friend of mine who spends a lot of time driving. He loves taking his four-by-four into different parts of the continent. He says it's stark, the difference when you drive through Malawi with its abject poverty, and Zambia, where there are trucks on the road and everything seems to be booming. You travel a lot. Is this your experience too?Ivor Ichikowitz (01:26): Alec, I have to tell you, I'm biased. I love Zambia. I've always loved Zambia. I think the place is remarkable. The people are phenomenal. It's a country that's got energy, it's got a heartbeat. And that's absolutely my experience. I think the Zambian people are educated and they know the potential of their country, and they're working towards achieving it. So it's absolutely my experience of the country.Alec Hogg (01:59): And we can now quantify it, because the Africa Youth Survey, conducted every two years by your foundation, looks at Zambia as one of 16 countries. I want to highlight something that caught me: in 2020, 10% of the youth were optimistic about the future. I suppose we aren't too far away from that in South Africa. It had gone up to 23% two years later. And now, in the latest survey, 55%. That's astonishing. Is this the HH factor, or is there something else at work here?Ivor Ichikowitz (02:32): No, this is 100% the HH factor. The Youth Survey called this election completely. We did the survey in March this year, and what the youth told us was going to happen in the election is exactly what happened. So when we published the Zambia report just ahead of the election, the information was overwhelmingly positive in support of what the government was doing, in support of HH. In fact, we had a bit of a dilemma over whether to publish it at all, because it was almost too positive. It almost looked like a pro-election ploy. So we waited to publish it literally the day before the election, because we didn't want it to look like electioneering.The reality is the youth called this completely. Not necessarily because they were happy with their circumstances, but because they saw in HH, in this government, a set of rails they could build their future on. Zambia outclassed the whole continent in terms of youth optimism, and in terms of that massive climb in confidence in a very short period of time. It shows you that one person with the right approach, with the right ability to engage with people and the youth, and with the commercial knowledge necessary to run an economy, can make a difference in a very short space of time. HH inherited a complete disaster. We mustn't forget that when he came into power, the country was completely bankrupt. It was one of the only African countries that went into a complete debt restructuring after Covid. And in four years he turned the country around, from a full debt restructuring into a country that investors were prepared to trust again, and an economy where people on the ground believed they had a future, from nowhere. It's a lesson for the whole continent. In fact, it's a lesson for the world. If you've got the right leader, you can absolutely change things literally overnight, and HH did that. I think he needs to be celebrated a lot more for that.Alec Hogg (05:04): What happened in the most recent election? Can you unpack that for us? Our community doesn't pay too much attention to what's going on in Zambia, but I think it's about time we started.Ivor Ichikowitz (05:17): So he won the election with a 61.4% majority, which in an African context is a very high majority. [See editorial flag 4 on the final certified tally.] The election turnout was acceptable, though not perhaps as high as everybody would have liked. But generally, the result for the ruling party and for Hichilema was very positive. The opposition leader was very much an unknown quantity, and there's no question the opposition is fractured in Zambia.One of the things that was interesting in the survey is that an overwhelming number of young Zambians told us they believed democracy was the way to go. But the youth turnout that we predicted was probably a little lower than what eventually happened, and turnout overall was still low. We're seeing a trend in Africa, which Zambia is confirming, that people believe in democracy but don't necessarily believe in voting. We need to start asking what that means. I think it means people believe they have a voice, and certainly the youth in Zambia believe they have a voice, and they used it in this election. But that voice isn't necessarily only through the ballot box. I think you're going to see a lot more civil action in Africa when there are specific issues. People are not going to wait four years for an election to tell their leadership they're not happy.Zambia's election was generally peaceful. It was declared free and fair. The opposition, as opposition do, came out very strongly against it, and there's now a legal process under way because the opposition wants to challenge the results. There was the normal shenanigans where the opposition leader declared victory ahead of the results, and all the usual nonsense that comes with these elections. But overall the result was absolutely clear, overall it was peaceful, and it was declared free and fair by almost all of the election monitors. A model election by African standards.Alec Hogg (07:42): He's also somewhat different to the kind of leaders who preceded him in Zambia, and in many other parts of the continent. Maybe unpack that for us.Ivor Ichikowitz (07:55): Hichilema himself is a very successful businessman. He contested five elections [stand to be corrected] before he won. He was absolutely adamant that he wanted to change Zambia from an economic perspective, to turn it into a model African country and show the world what we could do on this continent. When he became president, he immediately addressed the fundamental issues: sort out the civil service, sort out the economy, sort out education, engage with the people. And he did exactly that.But one of the flaws in the African democratic system is that four years doesn't give you enough time to fix things. I think this election shows that the African voting public understand that if you've got the right team, the right philosophy and the right approach, you have to give that team time to deliver. He's not unique. There are other leaders in Africa with similar views. This is a new, young generation of leaders who are outcome-focused, rather than just getting into power and seeing where it goes.HH is very worldly, very connected to what's going on elsewhere in the world. He knows Zambia has huge relevance to the world today. Zambia is one of the biggest copper suppliers in the world, and he's going to build a copper economy. He's set himself a target of achieving three million tonnes by 2030, about three times current production. He will achieve it, because the country has the raw materials and the resources, the people are prepared to work, and the world needs the commodity. More than anybody, he understands that the biggest security issue he faces is being able to create high-paying, long-term, sustainable jobs. If he can do that, Zambia will become a world-leading economy, not just an Africa-leading one. My money is on him. I think he can pull this off.Alec Hogg (10:23): It's certainly done something extraordinary. But you might also feel the Zambian population has, over decades, been through the mill, right from the days when Anglo American was heavily involved there. Many of our community probably don't know that story, so I'm asking you to be a bit of a historian here. Could you share that with us?Ivor Ichikowitz (10:47): Absolutely. Zambia was a real colonised country, with a post-colonial history that set up a government to feed the colonial powers in exactly the way they had been fed while running the country. They effectively turned to the locals and said, "Here are the headaches, we'll keep the economy." With huge respect to Anglo American and others, who I think did amazing things for Africa and for the mining world, they also didn't do a huge amount to empower the locals to secure real benefit from the resources being extracted. A lot of the country's history came down to having governments that were really just supporting large international mining companies who carried on doing exactly what they'd done during the colonial days.HH broke that mould completely. Instead of allowing the country to be polarised, the way it's happened elsewhere in the world, he said there's space here for everybody. He came into a country where Anglo American had, to a large extent, been displaced by the Chinese, where there was a massive pull between Russia, China and Europe to capture Zambia's copper resources. He said, that's not going to happen, we're going to talk to everybody. The Chinese are here, we'll deal with them. The US isn't here, we want to deal with them. Europe is here, we need to reset.He came in at a time when a lot of the mining licences were up for renewal. Instead of cancelling the licences and using that as an opportunity to clean the slate, he renegotiated the right deals for the country. The Anglo American deal in Zambia was not the right deal for the country. He also told everybody, including all the incumbents: you're going to employ Zambians, you're going to add value and beneficiate in our country, and you're going to show me an investment plan into 2030 that takes us to three million tonnes of copper, and you're going to explore the rest of the country, because you're going to be long-term residents and citizens of this country. That's a discussion that never happened in the Anglo American days. Zambia belonged to Anglo American and others, and the government was expected to do what the investors needed, as opposed to the investors doing what the people of the country need. That's the change he's made that's so dramatic.Alec Hogg (13:51): And the fact that it's working, the fact that he's been re-elected, means the people of the country are presumably understanding this now. But Ivor, what about South Africa, where in your survey of 16 countries our youth are the most disenchanted with what's going on at the moment? What can we learn from the Zambian model?Ivor Ichikowitz (14:20): Alec, Lusaka and Pretoria are a couple of thousand kilometres apart, you could probably cycle it in a couple of days. The reality is the two countries could not be further apart. Here we have Zambia, with a youth that's upwardly mobile, with a vision for the country, positive about the future. And here we have South Africa, with a very similar history to Zambia, clearly with some unfortunate added nuances like apartheid in the middle of it all, where we have a youth with no perspective of any positive signs in their future.There are huge lessons for South Africa from the Zambian reality. I would love Cyril [Ramaphosa] to get in a room with HH and have a chat about what it's like to be investor-friendly, what it's like to address the basic needs of people, what it's like to look at your country like a business. What does a business need? Stability. It needs to feel secure, to feel safe. What do people need in the streets? Exactly the same things. One of the things the Zambian youth told us, which is really interesting, is that an overwhelming majority actually feel safe every day. They feel safe to walk in the streets. They trust the police. What are South African youth telling us? They've never felt more unsafe. They don't trust the police. What are Zambian youth telling us? They believe everybody is equal in front of the law. What are South African youth telling us? Nobody is equal in front of the law. These are very basic lessons South Africa can learn from Zambia, and hopefully future governments in South Africa will get that, because otherwise we will be left so far behind.Alec Hogg (16:21): It was extraordinary, there's so much in what the Zambian part of the survey told us. But it was extraordinary that 70% of them actually trust the police. What's the South African figure by contrast?Ivor Ichikowitz (16:36): I don't have the exact number, but it's way below 30%. Very few, if any, young South Africans believe they can trust the police. The number that was most interesting to me is that an overwhelming majority of youth, right across geographies and income bands, don't feel safe in their own country. So if the people don't feel safe, how do businesses feel safe?Alec Hogg (17:20): Another pointer that came out for me, which was very exciting in the South African context, if we can replicate what's going on in Zambia, was immigration intent falling from over half the population to around a quarter. In other words, three-quarters want to stay. My goodness, don't we just need that here?Ivor Ichikowitz (17:42): This tracks really well with this whole sense of feeling comfortable, feeling valued, feeling like the government is at least creating a set of rails you can build a long-term sustainable future on. One of the challenges we see all over Africa right now is a hugely positive sentiment of optimism from the youth, but in some cases more than 50% also want to emigrate. They're not optimistic because their governments are getting it right, they're optimistic because they're saying, if you can't get it right, we're going somewhere that can. One of President Hichilema's biggest challenges right now is the risk of illegal immigration from South Africa into Zambia. This cuts in both directions. We're bitching and moaning about illegal immigrants coming into South Africa. This can move in the other direction just as easily. If young South Africans don't get what they want in South Africa, they're going to go. They're going to move.Alec Hogg (18:46): Remind us how the survey is put together.Ivor Ichikowitz (18:50): We've been doing the survey for six years. We survey the whole continent, east, west, north, south, every language group. There are a couple of countries we leave out simply because there's nobody to survey, but we cover pretty much the whole continent. The survey is implemented for us by PSB Insights, one of the largest scientific analysis teams in the world. We design the survey, they implement it. It's been absolutely robust over the years, and as we've built it, we've learned more about how to get our information more accurate. These are face-to-face, one-on-one interviews, not internet polls, a full hour each. We cover thousands of people in each country. We have a base of countries we survey every year, and add additional countries on top.We're now also starting to pull individual country reports, so governments have material they can actually use to make policy. The survey is made available to policymakers all over the world, and it's becoming a standard reference for anyone making policy on Africa. We're religious about the age group, 18 to 24, the next generation of leadership in waiting. What that age group is thinking isn't what the whole population is thinking, but it's an incredible reference point. We called the Zambian election within a couple of points. We called the Botswana election. We identified coups that were about to happen in West Africa. The results of the survey are, quite literally, building a crystal ball into the future of the continent.Alec Hogg (21:12): Now, after our last conversation there were some quite stark comments you made. If I was sitting in Pretoria in the houses of power, I would certainly have called you in for a chat, or come to see you for one. Have you had any engagement with South African politicians or government?Ivor Ichikowitz (21:33): We try all the time. I love South Africa, I feel this is my home, I want nothing more than to see this country succeed, and I know many people like me who want the same. But there are a lot of inconvenient truths that keep getting thrown at government, and you can almost not blame Pretoria for saying, we know about all of this, but we're overwhelmed, what are we going to do about it? People like myself want to help, we're here to participate and be part of the solution. It doesn't make me feel good to keep talking about the problems, I want to talk about the solutions.There's a sharp contrast between South Africa and Zambia here. President Hichilema is calling in everyone who can help him come up with solutions, whereas in South Africa I think government today has complete fatigue from people who just tell them about the problems, and as a result isn't necessarily engaging as broadly as it can, or should.Alec Hogg (22:46): So there's one thing that stands out from the Zambian success story to date, it's clear in what came out of the survey, and it's clear in the economic data too, and in the fact that HH got re-elected with a bigger majority. If there's one thing out of this, what would it be, if you got that phone call from Cyril, what would you tell him?Ivor Ichikowitz (23:10): Treat your country as if it were a business. Be good to your people, value the people who deliver and reward them, and deal with the people who don't. Create an environment where corruption is completely not acceptable, and more importantly, give people visibility of a plan. Make people feel there is a plan, and that investment can be long-term. There are people committing billions of dollars of investment to Zambia instead of bringing it to South Africa. If you have a mining licence in Zambia, the chances are you're going to keep it. I'm not sure that's the perception in South Africa. It might not be the truth, it might not be the reality of what the law says, but the perception is: get one in Zambia, you'll keep it; get one in South Africa, you might not.The next big message is: don't give people the opportunity to speculate. Stay consistent. And South Africa can be so fixed. This is a country with such incredible potential, opportunity and energy. All we have to do is create a partnership between the private sector, business and government. That's what Zambia has taught us. Create a partnership, and the partnership will go forward and do what's good for it. I'm not suggesting government mustn't protect the rights of the country and look after the interests of the people, that's exactly what Hichilema is doing. He's putting his people first, but bringing investors and business along. They're not in conflict in terms of what has to be achieved for the country, they're actually working in concert.But please don't get me wrong, Hichilema's got a huge task ahead of him. The fact he's been awarded such a strong mandate is because people believe he can carry on delivering results on the ground, based on the policies he set for himself. He's still got to deliver. In South Africa, we haven't yet even created that set of rails on which delivery can happen. I think the biggest message for government is: sort out the foundation. Once the foundation is sorted, bring on board the partners, bring on board all the people who know what the problems are, and tell them, here's a mandate to go fix it, and we'll do it in partnership. That's where the future of South Africa lies. And we're here. I'm here. Just phone me.Alec Hogg (26:02): The young people in Zambia are seeing it. The young people in South Africa desperately need to as well. Ivor Ichikowitz is chair of the Ichikowitz Family Foundation and founder of Paramount Group. I'm Alec Hogg, BizNews.com.