By: Creamer media

“We have been talking, even last week when I was in Germany, telling these companies to please consider the manufacture of some of your electric-vehicle components in Zambia,” Finance Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane said in Livingstone on Monday. “Those components can then be shipped to your factories in South Africa which now exports to the rest of the world. That is a powerful way of value addition.”

Zambia is Africa’s second-biggest producer of copper, a key component in EV engines.

The government plans to continue pursuing prudent fiscal policies, even if it doesn’t start a new International Monetary Fund program when the current one ends in October, he said. The cabinet had yet to decide whether to seek another loan.

Musokotwane criticized the abrupt cancellation of some aid programs to Zambia and Africa in general by the US, while acknowledging the assistance was always expected to decline.

The minister was speaking at Bloomberg’s annual Africa Business Media Innovators conference.