Monthly Brief: Inflation Cools, But the Food Basket Tells a Different Story
Headline inflation eased again this month. Strip out food and the picture is less comfortable.
KSJ Analytics
Zambia by the numbers
Every series on this page is monthly, goes back to 2011, and is read live from the KSJ economic database — not retyped into a picture. Latest reading: Aug 2026.
Inflation6.2%−0.30 ppon the month−6.40 ppon the year
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npm run import:indicators to load the series.Charts here use one axis only. To compare series on different scales — copper in dollars a tonne against inflation in percent — tick Index to 100, which rebases both to the first month in the range.
The yield curve
What the government pays to borrow, by tenor — the latest auction round against the same month a year earlier.
Aug 2026A year earlier
Prices & Inflation
Consumer prices, measured year-on-year and month-on-month.
Inflation6.2%−0.30 ppm/m−6.40 ppy/yAug 2026Food Inflation6.0%−0.40 ppm/m−8.90 ppy/yAug 2026Non-Food Inflation6.6%−0.10 ppm/m−2.70 ppy/yAug 2026Monthly Inflation0.2%0.00 ppm/m−0.30 ppy/yAug 2026Monthly Food Inflation0.2%+0.10 ppm/m−0.40 ppy/yAug 2026Monthly Non-Food Inflation0.2%−0.10 ppm/m−0.20 ppy/yAug 2026
Currencies
Kwacha mid-rates against Zambia’s main trading currencies.
Commodities
The export earners and the imported costs that set the terms of trade.
Interest Rates
What banks charge, what they pay each other, and the margin between.
Government Securities
The yield curve: Treasury bills and government bonds at auction.
91-Day Treasury Bill10.50%0.00 ppm/m−1.00 ppy/yAug 2026182-Day Treasury Bill10.95%0.00 ppm/m−1.30 ppy/yAug 2026273-Day Treasury Bill11.05%−0.10 ppm/m−2.45 ppy/yAug 2026364-Day Treasury Bill12.10%−0.10 ppm/m−2.40 ppy/yAug 20262-Year Bond13.00%−1.25 ppm/m−2.50 ppy/yAug 20263-Year Bond14.09%−0.41 ppm/m−1.41 ppy/yAug 20265-Year Bond14.98%0.00 ppm/m−4.22 ppy/yMar 2026 · not updated this month7-Year Bond14.79%−0.79 ppm/m−3.70 ppy/yAug 202610-Year Bond15.50%−1.00 ppm/m−3.50 ppy/yAug 202615-Year Bond16.50%−1.00 ppm/m−3.70 ppy/yAug 2026
Analysis
View allThe Kwacha's Year: Five Charts on a Currency Under Pressure
The exchange rate is the single price that touches every other price in Zambia. Here is where it has been.
Reading the Yield Curve: What Zambia's Borrowing Costs Are Signalling
Treasury bill yields, bond yields and the spread between them — a plain-English guide to the most quoted numbers in Lusaka finance.
The monthly data brief
Zambia's numbers, explained, in your inbox.
About this data
KSJ keeps a monthly database of Zambian macroeconomic series running from January 2011. Figures are compiled from the Bank of Zambia, the Zambia Statistics Agency and the London Metal Exchange, loaded into our own store, and re-read on every page view — so a chart published in an article last year shows this month's numbers today.
Where a series has a gap, we leave a gap rather than interpolating. Where a month's figure has not yet been released, the tile says so.
InflationFood InflationNon-Food InflationMonthly InflationMonthly Food InflationMonthly Non-Food InflationUS DollarBritish Pound