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Guy Lindsay Scott (born 1 June 1944) is a Zambian politician, who served as acting president of Zambia from 2014 to 2015, and was the 12th vice president from 2011 to 2014. Scott became acting president upon Michael Sata's death in office on 28 October 2014. This made him the first head of state of European descent in mainland Africa since F. W. de Klerk in 1989.
Scott completed his primary and secondary education at Springvale House and Peterhouse Boys' School, respectively, both located in what was then Southern Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe). He continued his education in England, where he received his undergraduate degree in economics in 1965 from Trinity Hall, a constituent college of Cambridge University. Scott then returned home to join the government of newly independent Zambia, in which he was a planner within the Ministry of Finance. During this time he was also the deputy editor of a publication called The Business and Economy of East and Central Africa.
In 1970, Scott established an agribusiness venture known as Walkover Estates, which focused on producing high-value crops such as irrigated wheat, strawberries, and a wide range of off-season vegetables. Strawberries produced by Walkover Estates were often featured in local Sainsbury's supermarkets. During this time, Scott was considered a model employer who spoke the local language and was known for his inclusive parties.
Scott eventually returned to England to continue his education at the University of Sussex, where he studied cognitive sciences and artificial intelligence, receiving his master's degree in 1983 and his doctorate in 1986. His doctoral thesis was entitled "Local and global interpretation of moving images". He went on to study robotics at Oxford University.
He was elected as Member of Parliament for Mpika Central on the MMD ticket in the National Assembly during the 1991 general election and was subsequently appointed as Minister of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries. He presided over a number of policy reforms and was responsible for managing the "drought of the century" in January and February 1992. There was no reserve maize in Zambia and none in southern Africa, so emergency arrangements had to be made to import it from overseas and move it into Zambia on dilapidated rail and road networks. He also oversaw the drought recovery "bumper harvest" of 1992–93. However, he was sacked by President Chiluba on 15 April 1993.Jacqueline Audrey Kalley, Elna Schoeman & Lydia Eve Andor (1999) Southern African Political History: A Chronology of Key Political Events from Independence to Mid-1997 Greenwood Publishing Group, p703
In 1996, Scott resigned from the MMD to form the Lima Party together with Ben Kapita, the president of the ZNFU. He piloted the merger between the Lima Party and other parties including Dean Mungomba's Zambia Democratic Congress to form the Zambia Alliance for Progress. In 2001, he returned to politics and joined the Patriotic Front, returning to the National Assembly after being elected MP for Lusaka Central in the 2006 general election.
Shortly after his election, The Guardian quoted Scott as saying: "I have long suspected Zambia is moving from a post-colonial to a cosmopolitan condition. People's minds are changing: they are no longer sitting back and dwelling on what was wrong about colonialism". Zambia's white vice-president hails 'cosmopolitan' new era, The Guardian, 4 October 2011 Referring to a 2012 meeting with former U.S. President George W. Bush (who sponsors various charity initiatives in Zambia), he said, "when they introduced me as Vice President, he thought they were kidding".
Since the parentage clause of Article 34 of the Constitution of Zambia required that both parents of presidential candidates be "Zambian by birth or descent," Scott was considered ineligible to stand for the office due to his parents being Scottish and English immigrants. That provision had been put in place by President Frederick Chiluba to prevent Kenneth Kaunda – whose father was born in what became Malawi – from becoming president again. However, a previous judgement by the Zambian Supreme Court, in a similar case in 1998, could have validated him as a potential candidate. Nevertheless, Scott did not stand as the presidential candidate for his political party, the Patriotic Front.
On 3 November 2014, Scott dismissed Edgar Lungu as Secretary General of the Patriotic Front; however, he reinstated him a day later, Zambian President Guy Scott in row over Edgar Lungu sacking, BBC News, 4 November 2014. after street protests in Lusaka. On 17 December 2014, Scott rejected calls from cabinet members asking him to resign as acting president.
Lungu, standing as the Patriotic Front's candidate, won the January 2015 presidential by-election and succeeded Scott as Zambia's sixth president on 25 January 2015.Matthew Hill, "Zambian Ruling Party's Edgar Lungu Inaugurated as President", Bloomberg, 25 January 2015.
In 2019, he published Adventures in Zambian Politics: A Story in Black and White, a book about both the history of Zambia and his own political career. In 2021, he joined the United Party for National Development.
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