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Mobile internet, 4G and 5G in Zambia

Zambia's mobile market runs on three operators — MTN Zambia, Airtel Zambia and Zamtel, the state-owned incumbent — regulated by ZICTA (Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority), established in 2009. ZICTA's own 2024 annual figures put active mobile-cellular subscriptions at 23.2 million, up from 21.1 million the year before, with internet subscriptions growing from 12.6 million to 13.5 million over the same period and the number of telecommunication sites up 10% to 14,519. No national 4G or 5G coverage percentage is published by ZICTA, whose own site did not return readable content to any check this round.

5G is commercially live from both main operators but still limited in reach. MTN Zambia is reported to have launched the country's first 5G network on 28 November 2022; Airtel Zambia followed around July 2023, launching in what it described at the time as select areas of Lusaka only — 5G routers were made available at Lusaka stores, and Airtel notes that an existing SIM card works fine, though the handset itself needs to support 5G.

Roaming in Zambia without an eSIM

Zambia is outside the EU and the EEA, so 'Roam Like at Home' does not apply. That arrangement covers the EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, along with Moldova and Ukraine — Zambia is not among them. Your Belgian or Dutch bundle therefore stays behind: your operator bills every megabyte at its own out-of-bundle roaming tariff, without the EU price caps. Check that tariff with your provider before you go.

SIM registration in Zambia

Zambia requires live facial-image capture alongside identity documents for every new SIM registration and replacement, a rule ZICTA has enforced with a deadline of 28 February 2023 for completing the switch across all networks. This isn't a new or easy process even for Zambians: ZICTA has had to repeatedly re-enforce registration compliance over more than a decade, including threatening disconnections, reprimanding an operator, and relaunching the whole registration campaign in 2025 after an earlier round ran into what press reporting described as government bureaucracy. No source sets out a separate procedure for a foreign visitor specifically, so we can't publish one — a working eSIM already active before departure avoids the question.