Zambia’s talks with the US over a new $2 billion health aid deal stalled because the proposed agreement included data sharing that would violate citizens’ privacy rights and was conditional on first agreeing to preferential access to mineral resources, the nation’s foreign minister said.
The inclusion of the terms related to data sharing were unacceptable and “unconscionable,” Mulambo Haimbe said in a statement Monday. He also said it was concerning that the health pact depended on the governments signing a critical minerals agreement favoring US companies.
Haimbe was responding to the outgoing US Ambassador Michael Gonzales, whose farewell speech last week included sharp criticism of the Zambian government, including over what he called “institutionalized and refined corruption” that deterred US investors — claims Haimbe dismissed as “delusional.”
The spat suggests deteriorating relations with the US, after the two nations had drawn closer in recent years under President Hakainde Hichilema’s leadership. Zambia, Africa’s second-biggest copper producer, has seen growing interest from mining investors keen to cash in on near-record prices for the metal key to electric vehicles and power grids.
KoBold Metals, a US company, last week broke ground on a $2.3-billion-plus copper mine that will be Zambia’s biggest. Zambia also plans to develop a rail link to the Angolan port of Lobito, part of a corridor project to which the US has committed hundreds of millions of dollars of funding.
Neighboring Zimbabwe also rejected a US health aid deal because of privacy concerns, as did Ghana. Last year, a Kenyan court suspended part of that nation’s agreement while it hears a case over data privacy concerns.
Gonzales, meanwhile, rejected the notion that the US was making health aid conditional on access to critical minerals.
“Any suggestion that the US would withhold critical life-saving healthcare support from those Zambians whose lives and health depend on it unless we get critical minerals is disgusting and patently false,” he said in his speech.
Zambia says privacy, minerals concerns stall US health aid deal