At 140 persons per square kilometre, Lusaka Province is by far the densest part of Zambia, a country whose overall population density is closer to 25. The capital accounts for most of that concentration, but not all of it. Chilanga, Chongwe, Kafue, Luangwa and Rufunsa districts surround the city, and each has grown into a mix of urban satellite and rural hinterland. The province shares borders with Central Province to the north, Southern Province to the south, and Eastern Province to the east. Its southeastern edge meets the Lower Zambezi, with the Lower Zambezi National Park serving as a natural barrier against Zimbabwe and, beyond it, Mozambique. Two airports serve the province: Kenneth Kaunda International Airport in Chongwe District, which handles the international traffic, and Lusaka City Airport, the smaller domestic field within the city itself.

The geography is plateau country with rivers cutting through. The general elevation drops eastward from the Kalahari Basin toward the Zambezi depression, creating the raised flat lands that dominate central Zambia. The Kafue River, a tributary of the Zambezi, cuts huge valleys into that plateau, and its Kafue Flats occupy the southwestern edge of the province. Further east the Luangwa Valley begins its long rift-valley descent, and the Lunsemfwa River carves its own valley across the north. The province sits squarely on a continental watershed: rainfall that falls on one side drains to the Atlantic via the Congo, and on the other to the Indian Ocean via the Zambezi. That divide runs from the DRC down into southern Tanzania. Three seasons shape the year: cool and dry from April to August, hot and dry from August to November, warm and wet from November to April. October is the hottest month.

The province's cultural life is older than the capital. The Soli people, long-time inhabitants of the land that became Chongwe District, hold the Nkhombalyanga festival in July and the Chakwela Makumbi in September, the latter a rain ceremony asking for good crops in the season ahead. In Luangwa District the Chikunda people hold the Dantho festival in September, celebrating river life and ancestral spirits. These ceremonies pre-date the colonial period and survived it, as did the chieftaincies that organise them. They sit alongside the contemporary rhythms of Lusaka itself: its markets at Soweto and Kamwala, its office districts, the Embassy Park commemorating the three Zambian presidents buried there, and the road-side trading that extends for tens of kilometres down the Great East and Great North roads. The province is the country's most urbanised by a significant margin, with the highest concentration of doctors and, consequently, the lowest incidence of malaria among Zambia's ten provinces.

Economic life is varied and uneven. Youth unemployment stood at 52 percent as of 2008, though more recent figures vary. Wheat is the province's major crop, with 48,510 metric tonnes produced in 2014, nearly a quarter of Zambia's national output. The cultivated area that year covered 82,603.72 hectares, 4.35 percent of the national total, an inversion that shows the province punching well above its weight in agricultural productivity. Beyond the farms, the Lower Zambezi National Park protects the elephant herds, wild dogs and fish eagles of the valley floor, where the river marks the international border. Tourism operators run walking safaris and canoe trips along the Zambezi and small charter flights into the Luangwa. The province's edges are wild in a way that the capital's expanding suburbs never quite conceal. Lusaka Province is the Zambia most visitors see first and the Zambia they rarely see alone.