capitals in Africa - an impression of modernity and progress.

However, that was the capital. I was surprised to see that South Africans had begun to dominate the rural retail trade even here Mazabuka.

Investment

It is an indication of how deep the influence of liberalisation has reached in Zambia, a country that has undergone an eastern-European style transformation to free market ideals.

The reforms began in 1991, when former President Frederick Chiluba swept 'Father of the Nation' Kenneth Kaunda out of power and started turning his "humanist" - read, broadly, socialist - policies on their heads.

The impact of those reforms is still being felt, and since President Chiluba was levered out of power in 2001 under a cloud of corruption charges - some relating to the mass privatisations that followed hisarrival in power - Zambians have been debating the pros and cons of the free market.

Pre-Chiluba, the Zambian government owned about 300 large and smaller scale enterprises, from huge copper mines to agricultural cooperatives, and even butcher's shops.

"These companies were losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year," an international banker in Lusaka told BBC World Service's Assignment programme.

"They had to go - it was either privatise or see them all collapse completely."

All but a handful of these firms have now been privatised and, in the wave of liberalisation, many import tariffs which used to protect Zambian industry from outside competition have also been swept away.

The result has been some inward investment - such as the South African supermarkets - but also complaints about widespread unemployment.

Cheap imports

For example,