[3] The fact that the road started at Landless Corner, 69 km north of Lusaka, suited traffic to and from the Copperbelt.

Lusaka did not become the capital of the country until about the time the road was built (1935) and it was not until the late 1940s that it became an important centre.

This road was first paved around 1969, to a new alignment which, controversially for the residents of those towns, bypassed Mumbwa and Kaoma by a few kilometres.

A lack of maintenance through the late 1970s and 1980s meant that by the 1990s the pavement of the road from Landless Corner was in bad condition and had lost in some sections.

[1][2] It is 116 kilometres in length[4] up to Mumbwa Central and is in poor condition, with motorists having the impression that the road is really not being properly maintained.

The road heads west from the Lusaka city centre for 150 kilometres, passing through the northern part of Chilanga District (Mwembeshi), entering Central Province at Nakachenje and passing through Shibuyunji District, encountering the Mumbwa Toll Plaza,[6] to bypass Mumbwa to the south.

[2] An ambitious project, the Barotse Floodplain causeway was started in 2002 to extend the road from Mongu to Kalabo on a 46-kilometre causeway across the Barotse Floodplain, via the ferry across the Zambezi's main channel at Sandaula, which would then be replaced by a 500-metre bridge.

The long term intention is to then continue the highway into Angola and to connect with its road network as a new trade route for Zambia to Atlantic Ocean ports.

[9][10] On 6 October 2024, it was reported that Zambia had signed a $50 million cooperation agreement with the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (ABEDA) for the construction of the road from Kalabo westwards through Sikongo to the border with Angola.