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Zambia declares Hichilema president-elect on 2,965,326 votes, with no second round needed

By Staff Writer  |  18 August 2026

The Electoral Commission of Zambia completed its count in the early hours of Tuesday and declared the incumbent the outright winner of last Thursday's vote. European Union observers called the polling largely peaceful but said the wider process was run on an uneven field.

Zambia has a declared result. In the early hours of Tuesday the Electoral Commission of Zambia announced that Hakainde Hichilema had won a second five year term outright, on 2,965,326 votes against 1,856,217 for the opposition leader Brian Mundubile. The commission put the winning share at 61.4 per cent of the five million votes cast, above the more than half a candidate needs to avoid a second round. A separate account carried by an international broadcaster and credited to two European agencies gives the shares as roughly 60 per cent against 38 per cent, and that difference has not been reconciled from what has been published so far.

I therefore declare, Hichilema Hakainde S, to be president-elect of the Republic of Zambia this 18th day of August, 2026

Mwangala Zaloumis, chairperson of the Electoral Commission of Zambia

The declaration closes a count that had been running since Thursday and that this site reported on Tuesday morning at 192 of 226 constituencies. Thirty four constituencies were then still to be tallied and verified, and the commission had published no date for a declaration. It came within hours.

A count that stopped and started again

The tally did not run cleanly. Counting was suspended on Friday and restarted hours later under heightened security, after the commission said polling station officials had been attacked and ballot papers stolen. On the night of the election the government confirmed that several leading opposition figures had been arrested, with the police saying they posed a threat to state security. Mr Mundubile said his own home had been raided by the police, in what he called an attack on his life. He had earlier said he had received information about the possible alteration of results forms and had called for an urgent independent investigation; the president's camp said he was lying.

Neither the allegation about results forms nor the police account of the arrests has been tested by any independent body. Both are recorded here as the claims of the parties that made them.

What the observers said

International observers, the European Union among them, said the election was largely peaceful. Their assessment of the wider process was cooler. The mission said the broader electoral process took place in an environment that limited fundamental freedoms, and its chief was blunter about the run up.

Late legal changes, legal uncertainty, and unequal campaign conditions distorted the playing field

Michael McNamara, chief of the European Union election observation mission

The Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops raised a separate point in a pastoral statement, about soldiers being deployed while the votes were being counted.

The maintenance of order during elections is constitutionally and statutorily the responsibility of the Zambia Police Service

The Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a pastoral statement

Why the result matters beyond Lusaka

This was Mr Hichilema's seventh run at the presidency and Mr Mundubile's first. The vote was read at home and abroad as a test of the economic plan the president has run since taking office in 2021, after the copper producing economy defaulted in 2020. He oversaw the restructuring of Zambia's sovereign debt, brought inflation down and steadied the currency, and asked voters to let him finish the job.

For anyone contracting in the region, the practical reading is narrow and worth stating plainly. A declared result on the day the count ended, with no run off, removes a month of uncertainty over counterparties, permits and public payment schedules in a copper economy that several contractors and consultants work in. What it does not remove is the appeal window, and the runner-up has said he wants an investigation. A declaration is the start of that clock, not the end of it.