By the Zambian Economist Analyst
The EAZ elections 2026 cycle is already underway, but before members vote, a rulebook question has to be settled first.
In September, the Economics Association of Zambia (EAZ) holds what commentary on the process has called its Elective Annual General Meeting. EAZ’s own notice describes the gathering as an Extra-Ordinary General Meeting (EGM), set for 4 September 2026 in Livingstone: the moment every two years when the body that is supposed to speak for Zambia’s economics profession chooses who leads it. Most Zambians outside the profession will never hear about it. That’s worth pausing on, because EAZ’s influence shows up in places ordinary Zambians do feel: submissions on the national budget, commentary on Bank of Zambia monetary policy decisions, positions on debt restructuring, and the general “what do the economists think” quote that shapes how policy debates get framed in the press.
Editor’s note: This article is built on a commentary by Dr. Kelvin Kamayoyo, which refers to the September meeting as an “Elective AGM” governed by Article 20 and Sub-Article 15.3. EAZ’s own nomination notice, published in July, describes the same meeting as an Extra-Ordinary General Meeting (EGM) set for 4 September 2026 in Livingstone, and cites Articles 19 and 21, with an Electoral Committee and Independent Returning Officer already in place. We have not been able to independently reconcile the two framings and present Dr. Kamayoyo’s terminology and article references as his own, attributed view rather than confirmed fact.
Before anyone gets to the question of who should lead EAZ for the next two years, a narrower but more consequential question has surfaced: can the association’s own constitution actually deliver a credible election? A recent commentary by Dr. Kelvin Kamayoyo, a Zambian economist and scholar, argues it can’t, not as currently written, and that EAZ should amend its constitution before it votes, not after. (EAZ’s own nomination notice, published in July, shows the process is already in motion.)
This is a governance story, not a partisan one. But it sits at the intersection of two things Zambian Economist has tracked closely through 2026: the credibility of the institutions that produce and interpret economic evidence, and the fiscal and policy debates, from IMF program compliance to election-year spending, where that evidence gets used, a thread we’re tracking across our Election 2026 Economics coverage. An economics association that can’t run a clean internal election has a harder time asking government ministries or state-owned enterprises to run clean, transparent processes of their own.
What EAZ Is, and Why Its Leadership Matters
EAZ is the professional body for Zambia’s economists: the equivalent, in spirit, of a bar association for lawyers or an institute of chartered accountants for auditors. Its Executive Committee doesn’t set government policy. It doesn’t have statutory power over the Ministry of Finance and National Planning, the Bank of Zambia, or ZamStats. What it has is convening power and reputational weight: EAZ statements get quoted by journalists, referenced by donor missions assessing Zambia’s policy environment, and cited in academic and think-tank work on Zambian development.
That convening power depends entirely on the association being seen as credible, independent, and internally well-governed. If EAZ’s own house isn’t in order, if members don’t trust the process that produces its leadership, then its external commentary on national economic governance carries less weight. Institutions that ask others to be transparent are judged, fairly or not, by whether they practice it themselves.
The Two Constitutional Problems on the Table
Dr. Kamayoyo’s commentary identifies two specific weaknesses in the EAZ constitution that he argues should be fixed before the September AGM proceeds.
1. Who appoints the Electoral Committee. Under Article 20, read alongside Sub-Article 15.3, the sitting Executive Committee, not the general membership, appoints the Electoral Committee that will run and adjudicate the election. In an ordinary year that might be a technical footnote. In a year where members of that same Executive Committee may be seeking re-election, it becomes something else: the people whose performance is being judged also have a hand in choosing who counts the votes on that judgment. Dr. Kamayoyo’s commentary goes further, noting that Article 20 doesn’t even specify how the Executive Committee is supposed to identify an Electoral Committee chairperson from outside the general membership, a gap that, left unresolved, invites competing interpretations at the worst possible time: mid-election.
This is a familiar problem in institutional design generally, not unique to EAZ. Election management bodies, from national electoral commissions down to professional associations and cooperative societies, are judged less on whether irregularities actually occur and more on whether the structure makes irregularities possible. A membership-elected Electoral Committee removes the appearance of conflict even if no sitting officer ever intended to influence an outcome. Perception of fairness is, in governance terms, almost as important as fairness itself, because it’s what determines whether the losing side accepts the result.
2. Who is eligible to stand for the top three positions. The second issue is about candidate eligibility for President, Vice President, and National Secretary General. Dr. Kamayoyo argues these positions should be reserved for members who meet the professional qualification criteria set out in Sub-Article 7.1, in effect, that EAZ’s top leadership should be economists by training, not simply members in good standing. He points to Sub-Article 15.2 as the provision that would need to be read alongside 7.1 to settle this clearly, since 15.2 currently appears to create a broader exception allowing any member to contest any post.
The underlying argument is about institutional identity: a professional association’s authority to speak on economic matters rests partly on the assumption that its leadership actually has the professional grounding the association exists to represent. If a body legally titled the “Economics Association of Zambia” can be led by non-economists, its policy commentary is more easily dismissed by critics as unrepresentative of the profession it claims to speak for.
Why EAZ Elections 2026 Isn’t Just an Internal Matter
It would be easy to read this as a dispute that only affects a few hundred association members. But there’s a broader reason Zambian Economist is covering it under our governance and economic-policy lens rather than treating it as pure organizational trivia.
Zambia’s policy environment in 2026 is unusually dense with technical debate: the Extended Credit Facility program with the IMF requires sustained fiscal discipline and structural reform commitments; debt sustainability questions linger in the wake of the 2020 default and subsequent restructuring; the Bank of Zambia‘s Monetary Policy Committee continues to navigate inflation and kwacha stability with limited room to maneuver; and an election year adds pressure on the fiscal calendar as political and development spending compete for the same constrained budget.
In that environment, having a credible, professionally grounded, internally democratic economists’ association matters more, not less. Government needs a technically serious counterpart to engage with on budget submissions. Journalists need a source they can quote without readers assuming the quote is politically compromised. Donor missions assessing Zambia’s institutional strength look, even informally, at whether professional bodies function well. A weakened or internally contested EAZ is a weaker input into all of that, quietly but measurably.
What Reform Would Actually Look Like
Dr. Kamayoyo’s proposed fix is straightforward in structure, even if the constitutional drafting will take real work: amend Article 20 so the Electoral Committee is elected by the general membership rather than appointed by the outgoing Executive Committee, and clarify Sub-Article 15.2 alongside 7.1 so that eligibility for the top three offices is unambiguous. His broader recommendation is sequencing: amend the constitution first, hold the election after, rather than voting under rules acknowledged to be flawed and hoping the outcome isn’t contested.
That sequencing argument has a practical logic to it. Constitutional amendments made after a disputed election tend to be read as reactive and self-serving by whichever side lost. Amendments made calmly, before anyone knows who wins or loses under the new rules, are much harder to characterize as rigged in anyone’s favor. Zambia’s own broader political history, where electoral rule changes close to a vote routinely draw accusations of manipulation regardless of actual intent, is a useful cautionary parallel here, even though EAZ’s AGM operates on a far smaller and lower-stakes scale.
What This Means for Different Readers
For EAZ members, the immediate question ahead of September is procedural: does the membership have the appetite and the constitutional mechanism to pass amendments before the AGM proceeds, and is there enough time to do so without simply delaying the meeting?
For policymakers and civil servants who interact with EAZ submissions and commentary, the episode is a reminder to weigh the source of any professional-body statement against how that body actually governs itself, much as scrutiny has followed the Anti-Corruption Commission’s own accountability record, a point that applies well beyond economics to law, accounting, medicine, and engineering associations across Zambia.
For journalists and researchers, it’s worth watching whether the September AGM proceeds as scheduled, under amended rules, or under a contested process: each outcome tells you something different about EAZ’s institutional maturity.
For the general public, the direct effect is minimal in the short term, but professional-body credibility feeds indirectly into the quality of public economic debate, which is where most people actually encounter economics: budget season commentary, inflation explainers, and reaction to Bank of Zambia decisions.
The push for cleaner rules complements judicial preparations too: see our coverage of Chief Justice Malila on judicial independence ahead of the 2026 election.
