History
The Bank of Zambia has origins in the 1937 formation of the Southern Rhodesia Currency Board, which was based in Harare, in present-day Zimbabwe. The board's jurisdiction included Northern Rhodesia, now called Zambia and Nyasaland, known as Malawi today.
In 1954, the Southern Rhodesia Currency Board was renamed the Currency Board of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the currency board was transformed into the Bank of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1956.
In 1964, the Bank of Zambia was created from the Bank of Northern Rhodesia, which itself had only formed a year earlier in 1963 from the Lusaka branch of the Rhodesia and Nyasaland bank.
After its creation, and after the passage of the Bank of Zambia Act in 1965, the bank grew and was successful down through the decades. According to its website, the bank acquired an equity stake in the Development Bank of Zambia and the Zambia National Commercial Bank and was even considering diversifying into the agricultural sector.
In 1991, the Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) came to power in Zambia, replacing the United National Independence Party (UNIP) which had ruled for 27 years. The new government's fiscal priorities included liberalization and privatization, which included the Zambian copper industry and Zambian Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM), the company that controlled copper production in Zambia.
The bank repelled a hacker attack by Hive ransomware group in 2022,[8][9] which was later infiltrated and subsequently shut down in January 2023, when the United States Department of Justice announced that it had coordinated with Germany and the Netherlands to seize Hive's servers following investigation by its Federal Bureau of Investigation.[10] Bank of Zambia said it declined to pay the ransom.[11] It also said the breach caused minimal damage to its systems.[12]
In July 2023, the company suffered a hack of its Facebook account.[13]
