In this thesis, I question the understanding of structural transformation within mainstream economics, finding that it is too readily restricted to shifts in composition of output and promotion of total factor productivity. While this identifies the kinds of shifts necessary to transform the structure of production, it is not only ahistorical but also inadequately addresses the form of linkages necessary for a broader-based form of industrialisation, whilst leaving out of consideration the crucial agents essential to bring them to bear. By reference to the Developmental State Paradigm (DSP), the state is seen as a crucial agent for development, capable of successfully guiding and promoting structural transformation through its interventionist policies and interaction with political and economic interests such as private capital and labour. Nevertheless, to be of greater purchase in present discourse, the DSP must move beyond its limited focus and an intellectual framing underpinned by reference to a state-market dichotomy. This requires situating and framing the interactions of socio-political and economic interests through processes of accumulation, with development following from particular forms of growth and development. I make use of the Linkage-Agency approach and notion of a system of accumulation to identify the vital interests embedded in the immediate post-Independence Zambian economy. Through the lens of development planning in the 1960s and 1970s, the constrained if negligible form of structural transformation experienced in the post-Independence Zambian economy is found to be a consequence of the nature of interests and underlying system of accumulation, with continuities and limited shifts as point of departure from the colonial era.