Background
Axon Soko was born on June 10, 1930, at Chipata, Eastern Province.
Axon Soko was born on June 10, 1930, at Chipata, Eastern Province.
Educated at Chalimbana Training Institute and Munali Secondary School which he left in 1951 with a senior secondary certificate in accountancy.
His parliamentary career began in 1964 when he was elected MP for Lundazi, a constituency close to the Malawi border. For the first three years of Independence he was Minister of State at the Finance Ministry. In 1967 he was appointed Minister of the Eastern Province and later that year became Minister of State for Economic Development. In 1968 he was made Minister of the Northern Province and the following year Minister of the Central Province.
In 1970 he became Minister of the Copperbelt Province and in 1971 Minister of State for Technical and Vocational Training. Later that year he joined the cabinet as Minister of Trade and Industry. During a visit to Lagos in October 1972 he paved the way for a Zambia-Nigeria trade agreement, the first to be negotiated with a West African country.
He began work as a bookkeeper clerk at Kitwe in 1951 and became a cooperatives inspector in 1952. The following year he left to work with various commercial companies at Kitwe until 1959. His party activities began with membership of the African National Congress which he left in 1958 at the Kaunda-Nkumbula split and joined Kaunda’s Zambia National Congress. In 1959 he was restricted as a political detainee at Luwingu. On his release he resumed political work with the United National Independence Party, rising to be its regional secretary at Ndola.
An accountant-bookkeeper with a trained mind for business who has worked hard as a minister to extend Zambia’s trading outlets to West Africa and elsewhere. As a party activist of long standing, who supported Kenneth Kaunda at the breakaway from the African National Congress and who was rounded up as a political detainee in 1959, he has been trusted with ensuring the implementation of government policies over the years in four provinces.