Markets, crafts, and bringing something home worth keeping
The souvenir problem in any capital is the same: a great deal of what is sold to visitors as local craft was made in bulk somewhere else entirely, and the genuinely good pieces sit a little off the obvious path without a sign over them. Lusaka rewards anyone willing to look past the airport curio rack, and most of the looking happens along a single stretch of road.
The Leopards Hill Road corridor, running south-east out of Kabulonga, is where the city's makers and studios have quietly clustered, and a slow morning along it is the most reliable way to find work that was actually designed and produced here. The Leopards Hill Market gathers a strong selection of Zambian design houses under one roof; the Africa Block Project shows how local artisans turn out block-printed textiles in contemporary patterns; and Kuduberry Studios, the home of this imprint, keeps a tightly curated range of rare finds for the home and the wardrobe, with The Harvest Table's preserves and baked goods on the same site for the kind of thing you buy for yourself and then immediately buy again as a gift. Afrikolor sits along the same route, and the practical move is to plan the whole corridor as one long outing rather than a single stop.
The markets here run to a calmer rhythm than the word usually implies. Farmgate Market, off Leopards Hill Road, is a Saturday-morning ritual where produce comes straight from the growers and the real draw is the social slowness of it, the coffee and the artisanal snacks between the stalls. Sugarbush Market, held at Sugarbush Farm around the holidays and festive seasons, brings produce, food stalls, and a rotating cast of local makers together in an easy, family-filled atmosphere. Neither is a place to rush.
If your visit happens to land in June or November, the Zambian Art and Design Show is the one to plan around: a biannual gathering of established and emerging talent from Zambia and across the continent, spanning art, fashion, interiors, ceramics, and gourmet food, and the single best place to understand the country's design culture in one room, though exact dates and venues shift, so it is worth confirming before you build a trip around it. For something to carry home with real provenance, Zambian Wildflower Ceramics throws and fires its pieces from local clay, and the textiles, the ceramics, and the design-house pieces from the corridor are the things that were genuinely made here and will mean something on a shelf at home. On the first Saturday on the month, the Food and Craft Market at the Dutch Reformed Church is worth a visit.
Which makers are worth the detour, on which day the markets actually run, and how to thread them into a single morning is precisely the sort of detail the forthcoming Lusaka City Guide sets out to map properly. It is coming soon; have a look at what's next and register your interest here.