Southern Africa into South Africa.

Paying a South African supplier from Lusaka or the Copperbelt usually means buying dollars first, waiting on the bank, and finding out the landed rand only after it has arrived short.

Obtaining foreign currency through the formal banking system is the hard part, before anyone has processed a payment. Businesses end up holding US dollars, paying through intermediaries, or sending cash across the border.

The pula is comparatively stable and the banks work, so the pain here is less about access and more about time and opacity: days in transit, and a rate you see afterwards.

Foreign currency is rationed in practice, and businesses wait to be allocated it. A supplier payment can be held up for weeks by the currency, not by the buyer's ability to pay.

Companies report persistent difficulty obtaining foreign exchange through the banking system, which turns a routine supplier payment into a scheduling problem.

There is no exchange rate to argue about, and businesses still wait. Since September 2024 payments between Common Monetary Area countries no longer clear domestically and route internationally instead, which added days and cost to a payment that used to be simple.

Almost everything is bought from South Africa, and since September 2024 paying for it stopped being a domestic transfer and became an international one, with the delay and cost that brings.

The same Common Monetary Area problem: a payment to a supplier an hour away is now processed as an international transfer.