The Lusaka-based part of the research team had a poster campaign around different areas of the town. This was done to find more participants willing to take part in the project by helping us with any relevant information or contacts with former workers of Yugoslav companies in Zambia. The poster campaign was done as a … Read more
Examining Zambian-Yugoslav cooperation in independent Zambia, it is clear this was not taking place in a vacuum. While conducting research in Lusaka and elsewhere, we have been also trying to account for the ways in which Yugoslav-Zambian relations overlapped and intersected with the engagement of other countries in Zambia. Indeed, a common trope in oral … Read more
During my research in Zambia, I had the privilege to visit and interview Wilted Phiri together with co-researchers Joy Phiri and Teckson Njovu. Wilted Phiri was one of the key “behind the scenes” cadres of the United National Independence Party (UNIP) and an important figure in the Southern African anticolonial movement of the 1960s and … Read more
Josip Broz Tito and Kenneth Kaunda’s fraternal relations paved the way for Yugoslav self-managed companies to be contracted for some of Zambia’s most important and sensitive infrastructure projects between the late 1960s and 1991, including the construction of convention centers, military bases, airports, roads and power plants. Yugoslav construction companies and joint venture investments contracted … Read more
As the row of black limousines with diplomatic license plates approached the headquarters of Energoprojekt engineering and construction company in downtown Belgrade, they were greeted by employees in freshly pressed white overcoats lined up along the main entrance. The building was carefully decorated for this special occasion with rugs and flower arrangements laid out along … Read more