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The Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) has launched a Research Data Lab in Lusaka, making Zambia the third country in Africa to establish such a facility after South Africa and Uganda.
Developed in partnership with the United Nations University–World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), the lab aims to promote evidence-based tax policy and administration by granting researchers access to secure, anonymised tax data.
ZRA Commissioner-General, Dingani Banda, said the facility would enable both local and international researchers to generate insights that inform policy while ensuring strict data security and taxpayer confidentiality.
“This Research Data Lab complements our reforms aimed at making tax data usable for day-to-day decision-making and empirical research. It is a key tool for strengthening Domestic Resource Mobilisation (DRM),” Banda said at the launch held at the Sarova hotel in Lusaka on Tuesday.
He noted that Zambia’s reliance on domestic revenues had risen sharply due to shifting global geopolitics and declining aid.
Revenue administered by ZRA, he also claimed, had grown from 49 percent of the national budget in 2021 to 71.7 percent this year, and is projected to reach 80.9 percent by 2028.
The Commissioner-General emphasised that the facility was fully compliant with the Data Protection Act of 2021 and operates under a strict Data Governance Framework to safeguard confidentiality.
UNU-WIDER Research Fellow, Amina Ebrahim, hailed the initiative as a milestone that would enhance regional knowledge-sharing and policy design.
“This lab positions Zambia at the centre of data-driven tax policy in the region, making governance more transparent and evidence-based,” Ebrahim said.
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