Zambia ICT Procurement: Network & Data Centre Buyers

Zambia’s information and communication sector grew 17.4% in 2024, the fastest rate of any industry in the economy according to the Zambia Statistics Agency, and nearly all the equipment behind that growth is imported. Procurement concentrates in a handful of named buyers: MTN Zambia, Airtel Zambia, Zamtel, state infraco Infratel, and the USD 100 million Digital Zambia Acceleration Project.

Where Zambia’s ICT equipment budget goes

Four buying centres absorb most of the spend: rural tower construction, the national fibre backbone, data-centre capacity, and government digitalisation. Each has its own procuring entity and its own funding source, and quoting into the wrong one wastes months. The sector is not a side story either: information and communication contributed 1.8 percentage points to 2024 GDP growth, the largest positive contribution of any industry in the ZamStats preliminary estimates.

The most visible programme right now is the 152-tower rural rollout by Airtel Africa and IHS Towers, a USD 14 million investment reported by Capacity Media. Forty sites were live by September 2025, with the remainder targeted for the end of November 2025 and a further 80 towers planned for the fourth quarter, per Connecting Africa. The stated aim is lifting population coverage from 91.6% toward 93% by 2026.

Every site in that programme runs hybrid power, batteries, generators and solar, because grid reach ends long before the coverage obligation does. That pulls fabricated tower steel, rectifiers, solar hybrid systems, lithium battery banks and remote monitoring, categories with no local manufacturing base.

The backbone is further along than most first-time visitors expect. Zambia has laid more than 18,000 kilometres of fibre-optic backbone, per the US International Trade Administration’s country commercial guide, and Infratel alone operates over 10,000 kilometres of it as the national wholesale carrier. New funding keeps arriving: the first component of the Digital Zambia Acceleration Project pays for backbone and last-mile extensions, which means duct, splice closures, GPON electronics and test instrumentation will keep landing at Lusaka’s clearing agents for years.

Data storage and cloud computing are the fastest-growing subsectors of Zambian ICT, per the same ITA guide. Infratel runs three national Tier III data centres and Paratus Zambia operates a carrier-neutral, Tier III by design facility in Lusaka. With internet penetration at 33% in early 2025 and e-commerce up 26% in 2024, the headroom is obvious, and every hall built adds orders for chillers and precision air units, UPS strings, rack systems, gas suppression and DCIM software, none of which is made locally.

Satellite is starting to reshape the edge of this market. Starlink service is available in Zambia, per the ITA guide, and mobile networks already cover 92% of the population with broadband-capable service. For equipment suppliers the practical effect is a shift in where terrestrial spend concentrates: dense urban fibre, data-centre capacity, and the powered rural sites that satellite backhaul still terminates into.

The fourth line is e-government. The World Bank approved a USD 100 million IDA grant for the Digital Zambia Acceleration Project on 23 September 2025, structured around broadband expansion, interoperable government platforms, sector digitalisation and capacity building. It sits inside the regional IDEA programme alongside Angola, Malawi, the DRC and COMESA, so a supplier who wins here gets a reference that travels.

The buyer list: five institutions to map

Most Zambian ICT tenders trace back to five institutions, and they behave differently enough that each needs its own approach.

Buyer	Role	What they procure
MTN Zambia	Largest mobile operator, commercial 5G since 2022	Radio, transport, IT, site equipment
Airtel Zambia	Second operator, 5G rollout from 2023	Radio, fibre, rural coverage sites
Zamtel	State-owned third operator	Network modernisation packages
Infratel	State infraco under the IDC	Tower, data-centre and fibre equipment
Smart Zambia Institute	E-government division, publishes DZAP adverts	Platforms, connectivity, hardware

Infratel deserves particular attention because it has no equivalent in most neighbouring markets. Incorporated under the Industrial Development Corporation in August 2018, it operates 1,282 telecommunications towers, three national Tier III data centres and the country’s most extensive backbone fibre network, selling wholesale capacity to operators, ISPs and government. It is a single procurement counterpart covering all three passive-infrastructure categories at once.

ZICTA, the sector regulator, is a buyer-adjacent institution rather than a buyer: it co-drives the rural tower programme with government and the operators, and its type-approval regime gates every equipment import. On the private side, IHS Zambia holds the Airtel tower build and Paratus is expanding carrier-neutral capacity. How these parastatals sit inside the wider state-enterprise structure, and the customs and corridor mechanics that apply to every sector, is mapped in our Zambia industrial procurement guide.

Kwacha, letters of credit and getting paid

The kwacha floats, and lately it has moved in the buyer’s favour. Having hit a record low near 29.1 against the dollar in March 2025, the kwacha recovered to about 19 as of August 2026, its strongest level in years, while the central bank trimmed the policy rate to 13.25% at its May 2026 meeting. Quoting practice ignores all of this: ICT equipment is priced in USD.

For government lots, the working instrument is a USD letter of credit opened at one of four banks, Zanaco, Stanbic, Absa or FNB, each able to arrange offshore confirmation for foreign-issued paper. Expect a retention amount held back until commissioning is signed off. DZAP packages are a partial exception: World Bank procurement and disbursement rules apply, so payment security there beats standard parastatal terms.

The operators work differently. MTN Zambia and Airtel Zambia sit inside listed groups with central treasury functions, so equipment deals are typically settled on vendor-credit terms agreed at group level, with letters of credit reserved for one-off transactions. Chinese vendors compete with Sinosure-backed financing; European suppliers can answer with their own export credit agency cover where the buyer entity and tenor fit.

On the border side, the Zambia Revenue Authority clears goods through ASYCUDA World; duty bands top out at 25% and VAT is 16%, though many ICT capital lines sit in lower bands, so have a Lusaka clearing agent confirm the specific HS treatment before the quote goes out. Freight routing splits by value density. Containerised kit sails to Dar es Salaam for the TAZARA or road leg, or takes the Durban route up the North-South Corridor; radio units, optics and spares fly into Lusaka. Lithium batteries travel as dangerous-goods cargo, which affects routing and cost, so flag them separately in the freight quote.

Selling through the integrator and towerco layer

Direct operator tenders in Zambia mostly go to the incumbent network vendors who hold the radio and transport frames. For everyone else, the sale happens one layer down. A cooling, UPS, battery or instrumentation vendor wins by being written into the bill of materials of whoever holds the build contract, whether that is a systems integrator, IHS Zambia, or the mechanical-electrical firm fitting out a data hall.

IHS Zambia and Infratel are the two passive-infrastructure buyers to map first. Between them they control well over a thousand towers, and the rural build keeps adding off-grid sites that need steel, rectifiers, hybrid power and monitoring. On the data-centre side, the equipment list for Infratel’s three national facilities and the Paratus hall in Lusaka is fixed months before installation, so the conversation with the contracting engineers has to start at design stage.

There is also an enterprise layer the operator-centric view misses. The Copperbelt and North-Western mining houses buy connectivity, private networks and control-room systems on their own capex budgets, a stream we size in our Zambia mining and minerals guide. Suppliers of SCADA and process-control equipment eyeing that adjacency can read our guide to Canadian industrial controls manufacturers for how that supplier side is organised.

Where tenders appear, and the approval gate before them

Public ICT tenders surface on the ZPPA e-GP portal, which has been mandatory for Zambian public procurement since 2024; suppliers register once at eprocure.zppa.org.zm. The narrow set of cases still allowed to run outside the platform is governed by ZPPA Circular No. 37 of 2025. Once registered, filters on the Ministry of Technology and Science, Smart Zambia Institute, ZICTA, Zamtel and Infratel catch the lots that matter for equipment suppliers.

One gate sits before any of it: ZICTA type approval. All radio and telecommunications terminal equipment must be type approved before import and sale in Zambia. The process accepts internationally recognised lab reports and does not require in-country testing, but the clock runs in weeks, so start the filing while the quotation is still open.

DZAP procurement is advertised through the Smart Zambia Institute, which publishes project adverts on its own site, alongside standard World Bank channels. Investment registration and incentive questions go through the Zambia Development Agency.

The channels that stopped earning their cost

Ndola hosts the Zambia International Trade Fair, the country’s big annual exhibition, and its breadth is exactly the problem: operator network planners and Smart Zambia procurement officers are rare on the floor. The regional telecom circuit Zambian decision-makers actually travel to runs through South Africa, and a niche equipment OEM’s booth, freight and travel for those events costs more than a single country’s pipeline returns.

A resident sales engineer covering Zambia from Lusaka or Johannesburg reaches the two big operator accounts well, then thins out fast across Infratel, Smart Zambia, the towercos and the mining enterprise layer. The arithmetic only works for vendors already holding a frame contract.

The Lusaka importer-distributor channel mirrors the country’s import mix, South Africa at roughly 29% and China at 16% per the ITA. A distributor here is a logistics and warranty partner, useful once an order exists, but nobody in that channel prospects for a niche instrumentation or cooling line. And the engineers at the operators and parastatals have learned to go around the channel entirely when they want technical answers, straight to the OEM.

FAQ

Does Zambia have its own submarine cable landing?

No. All of Zambia’s international bandwidth reaches the sea over land, on fibre routes crossing its neighbours to coastal cable landings. Keeping several of those routes live is a standing infrastructure priority, which is why backbone and cross-border links recur in national plans, including the Digital Zambia Acceleration Project’s broadband component.

Is ZICTA type approval needed before shipping network equipment?

Yes. All radio and telecommunications terminal equipment requires ZICTA type approval before import or sale in Zambia. Internationally recognised lab reports are accepted and in-country testing is not required, but approval takes weeks, so file as soon as the RFQ conversation starts.

How does a foreign supplier bid on Digital Zambia Acceleration Project lots?

DZAP is financed by a World Bank IDA grant, so procurement follows World Bank rules. Adverts publish through the Smart Zambia Institute and standard Bank channels, with related public tenders on the ZPPA e-GP portal. Register at eprocure.zppa.org.zm early and monitor the Ministry of Technology and Science.

What payment terms should suppliers expect from Zambian ICT buyers?

Government and donor-funded lots pay by USD letter of credit, opened at Zanaco, Stanbic, Absa or FNB and usually carrying a post-commissioning retention. The listed operators negotiate vendor-credit frames through group treasury. Quote in USD; the kwacha traded near 19 to the dollar in August 2026 after a year of appreciation.

Is satellite internet a threat to terrestrial equipment sales in Zambia?

Not in the categories that matter for most suppliers. Starlink is available in Zambia, but towers still need steel, power and monitoring, data centres still need cooling and UPS, and the backbone build continues under the Digital Zambia Acceleration Project. Satellite mainly changes where rural backhaul terminates, not what gets procured.

Where to go from here

Zambia’s ICT buying is concentrated, English-language, and increasingly routed through one e-procurement portal, and the sector’s 17.4% growth keeps pulling imported equipment across every line from tower steel to server cooling. That buyer shape rewards systematic, named-account outreach; run well, an outbound engine delivers qualified ICT leads for USD 150 to 300 apiece, with unit costs that fall as coverage builds rather than climbing the way trade-fair and field-rep budgets do. For the wider cross-sector picture, start with the Zambia industrial procurement guide, and for the power dynamics behind every tower and data-centre design decision, see our Zambia energy infrastructure guide. Supplying network, fibre or data-centre equipment into southern Africa? Contact us for a Zambia-specific read on the buyer set, or email burak@papaverai.com directly.