Zambia is rich, but why is she a beggar? Unarguably, Zambia has been surpassed by a lot of countries in terms of economic development. For example, Zambia and South Korea were almost at the same level of development 56 years ago. Today, South Korea can proudly walk with its head held high as a rich country while Zambia is still crawling on soaring poverty levels and inequality. Simply put, Zambia is behind in almost all indices of human progress. Why is this the case?