To save the reader from trying to work out what that new acronym stands for the final A is for Australia – Africa Wins Again FOR Australia.

Why Africa would be doing something good for Australia is anybody’s guess but that’s precisely what’s happening today in Zambia, a country which has been a shining star in a part of the world desperately short of stars.

For reasons which caused Blower to reach for a strong bottle of pre-Christmas booze, Zambia decided to copy an Australian experiment in annoying mining companies by making a dramatic change in the way it taxes them.

The result has been devastating with one of the country’s biggest copper miners announcing closure plans, and others considering their positions.

Awful news for the Zambian government’s stretched budget, andfor the 4000 people about to lose their jobs, the decision to replace corporate income tax with a whopping 20% gross royalty on open-cut mines could eventually cost 12,000 jobs in the country’s mining sector.

For a part of the world which desperately needs jobs and wealth creation, the new Zambian mine tax/royalty system is almost beyond imagination because of the potential it has to destroy a critical part of the economy and in the way it hands a Christmas present to rival copper-producing nations, such as Australia, Chile and Canada.

Before considering the detail of what’s happened, and the response of the mining industry, it’s worth wondering why, in the days leading up to Christmas, a poor country would give so much to richer countries?

The three explanations which occurred to Blower are that (a) Zambian politicians are a generous lot or, (b) they haven’t thought through the consequences of their action, or (c) they’re really dumb.

Given that what’s happening in Zambia has a parallel in Australia’s attempts to hit miners with a special tax the likely answer is a combination of (b) and (c) – a combination of thoughtless, and stupid.

The World Bank, a normally cautious organisation, appears to largely agree with that view, warning that the new royalty system is “not a smart thing to do”, which is just a subtle variation of wording from the more obvious assessment that it’s a really brainless thing to do.

Whatever the criticism, the background to what’s happening starts inside Zambia’s budget problems, much like Australia’s adventures in mining super taxes during the time it was led by prime ministers Rudd and Gillard.

Zambia’s mob of pollies convinced themselves that the country was being ripped off to the tune of about $US2 billion a year in missing tax payments.

So, like Australia, it decided to attack the mining sector despite warnings that it would be an exercise of foot-shooting, with corporate tax dropped and the new royalty system pushed through Parliament, and payable from January 1.

The new system features the 20% royalty on open-cut mines and 8% on underground mines, an exceptionally daft split in itself, given that it is increasingly common for mines to have both processes underway at the same time, effectively imposing an entirely new accounting cost on mining.

The industry has reacted in much the same way as it did in Australia, only with much greater vigour, led by Canada’s Barrick Gold which has announced the closure of the Lumwana mine, and the progressive dismissal of 2000 direct employees and another 2000 contractors.

Barrick co-president, Kelvin Dushinsky, said his company had been left with no choice. “The economies of an operation such as Lumwana cannot support a 20% gross royalty, particularly in the current copper-price environment.”

Other mining companies operating in Zambia are believed to be considering their positions, including Glencore, First Quantum and Vedanta.

In time, the Zambian government might reconsider its position but until that happens it is easy to compile a scoreboard which reads three-to-nil, with all of the goals classified as “own”

In a remarkable hat-trick of self-harm the Zambians have created a system which threatens their biggest industry and the jobs of 12,000 workers (goal one), threatens to destabilise the government’s budget (goal two), and hands a boost to copper-mining rivals (goal three).

African Wins Again, with Zambia proving once again that Africa really is the hopeless continent.