Despite its curious bow tie shape, Zambia, the former Northern Rhodesia, is more
fortunate than most other landlocked countries of Africa, because it has
profited from the extraction of one major mineral resource, copper. A lower
middle income country with only six million inhabitants and a per capita GNP of
$ 580 (1983), it has closer economic parallels with southern Africa than in most
of the countries with southern Africa than in most of the countries with the
north. Its modest economic and considerable demographic growth has provoked
changes in the spatial patterns of population and settlement, especially rapid
urbanization with all its numerous attendant problems, such