{"id":42371,"date":"2026-08-13T10:08:49","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T08:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=42371"},"modified":"2026-08-13T10:08:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T08:08:49","slug":"zambia-votes-in-election-expected-to-favour-incumbent-hichilema","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/zambia-votes-in-election-expected-to-favour-incumbent-hichilema\/","title":{"rendered":"Zambia votes in election expected to favour incumbent Hichilema"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Zambians started voting on Thursday in a national election in which President Hakainde Hichilema is favoured to win \u200ca second term after overseeing an economic rebound during his first five years in office.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The country of 22 million people is voting in Presidential, Parliamentary and local government elections simultaneously.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Polls opened at six in the morning and will close at six in the evening, with results expected on Monday.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Hichilema has led the southern African copper producer since 2021 and \u200bis running on his economic record, having steered Zambia through a debt restructuring and recovery \u2060since it defaulted on its sovereign debt in 2020.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>His main challenger is Brian Mundubile, an experienced parliamentarian but \u200bfirst-time presidential candidate who is leading an opposition alliance backed by supporters of Hichilema&#8217;s predecessor, the late former \u200bPresident Edgar Lungu<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":23533,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-42371","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"Zambians started voting on Thursday which President Hichilema is favoured","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/42371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/42371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42372,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/42371\/revisions\/42372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=42371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}