The principal responsibility of the bank is to create and implement monetary policy that will maintain the economic stability of the country.

The areas now being contracted to external bodies include: outside security, canteen services, club and maintenance.

[6] The board of the Bank of Zambia is composed of the governor, who is the chairperson, and six other directors appointed by the Minister of Finance and National Planning.

The directors are appointed from among persons with professional or academic experience in business or financial matters and who are not officials or employees of the bank.

[7] The Bank of Zambia has origins in the 1937 formation of the Southern Rhodesia Currency Board, which was based in Harare, in present-day Zimbabwe.

In 1991, the Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) came to power in Zambia, replacing the United National Independence Party (UNIP) which had ruled for 27 years.

[citation needed] The bank repelled a hacker attack by Hive ransomware group in 2022,[8][9] which was later infiltrated and subsequently shut down in January 2023, when the United States Department of Justice announced that it had coordinated with Germany and the Netherlands to seize Hive's servers following investigation by its Federal Bureau of Investigation.