The Optimist Daily · 11 hours ago

A New Law in Zambia Makes Free Education Much Harder for Future Governments to Take Away | the Optimist Daily

When Zambia abolished school fees in 2022, more than 2.6 million children walked back through schoolhouse doors - proof that the barrier had never been ability or desire, only cost. This month, President Hakainde Hichilema signed that reality into law, embedding free public education from early childhood through secondary school into Zambia's legal framework in a way that no future government can quietly dismantle. The distinction matters enormously: as Vice-President Mutale Nalumango framed it, access to education "should not depend on the priorities of whichever administration happens to be in power." A legal obligation is a different thing from a political one, and Zambia has chosen to treat 2.6 million children's futures as the former. The law is, as the article puts it, "a floor, not a ceiling" - but floors are where everything else begins.