By Alexander Vomo
The UPND government, under the leadership of President Hakainde Hichilema and through Education Minister Douglas Syakalima, has loudly celebrated the introduction of free education. Yet behind the fanfare lies a disturbing truth: our classrooms are overcrowded, and our children are learning in chaos because there simply aren’t enough teachers to teach them.
Free education without adequate staffing is not a solution, it’s a publicity stunt. It’s a policy written in headlines but abandoned in implementation.
What kind of leadership declares victory while pupils are squeezed into classrooms of 80, even 100 students, per teacher?
What kind of New Dawn is this, where a child attends school but learns nothing because there’s no one to teach?
While parents rejoiced and children flocked to schools hoping for a brighter future, the government made no serious attempt to match that hope with action. Thousands of qualified, trained teachers are sitting at home, unemployed, waiting to serve their country. Meanwhile, those lucky enough to have jobs are overworked and underpaid, burning out trying to cover the gaps.
And yet, while this crisis grows, the same government is busy creating more constituencies, funding political campaigns, and bloating an already swollen bureaucracy.
Let the UPND answer this:
Where is the money for expanding parliamentary Seats coming from?
Where is the money going to come from to buy more Land Cruisers for more MPs?
Where is the leadership that understands that free education without teachers is like building hospitals without doctors?
Instead of building the future in classrooms, they are building careers in Parliament.
Instead of empowering minds, they are empowering themselves.
Instead of hiring teachers, they are hiring silence.
This is not what Zambians voted for.
This is not the transformation we were promised.
More MPs won’t teach a child how to read.
More political districts won’t solve illiteracy.
Constitutional amendments won’t help a student who has never even held a textbook.
Zambia needs more teachers, not just empty education slogans.
Zambia needs a government that matches policy with planning—not one that uses children’s futures as photo ops.
To every unemployed teacher, to every student packed into classrooms like sardines, to every parent losing faith in the system—your voices matter. You were promised change, not neglect. You were promised opportunity, not overcrowded failure.
A blackboard without a teacher is just a wall.
And a government that fails its children, fails its future.
Alexander Vomo is a Zambian entrepreneur, farmer, and advocate for self-reliance and sustainable development. He is a member of a growing movement encouraging African youth to take leadership in agriculture, governance, and economic transformation.
CDF is and will be the game changer. More constituencies will result in more manageable and focused areas and people will decide to either build more schools clinics and so on. That’s my understanding.
Don’t hide in Entrepreneur advocate what what, if you were a genuine entrepreneur you would have known by now that K36 million allocated to a Constituency per year can make a huge difference in building classrooms and hiring Teachers, but its the Opposition MOs from your Tonse Alliance who are refusing to use this money. You’re a Tonse Member that’s all you are.
Show us a glowing example of a constituency which has solved the overcrowding issue using the CDF.
The man is just pointing out an issue which does actuallt deserve attention.
There is no benefit to the children for them to sit in a class of 100 and walk back home without picking up the skills to read and write properly
These children are being destined to be carpenters and bricklayers instead of lawyers and doctors because they will not make it to university in a class of 100 pupils from grade 1 to grade 6 or Form 1.
This is a fact and let us debate it without emotion.
I am not a politicican or a supporter of any political party – just a bonafide citizen
A Zambia of more these days
More loadshedding
More traffic Offices
More Corruptiom
I’m tired cant go on >>>
A great article. Having worked in various schools in Zambia, I perfectly understand what the author is saying. I have worked in classrooms with 60+ children, sitting 4 at a desk intended for two pupils. It is impossible to give adequate attention to the quieter pupils and thus so many fall behind!
THis author is so good at putting across our problem. We are failing to see because of blind loyalty. He states: Free education without adequate staffing is not a solution, it’s a publicity stunt. It’s a policy written in headlines but abandoned in implementation. How well put!! If someone gives you free food and you arrive to find food covered in maggots are you going to be thankful to him?
Work in progress is happening under the government of upnd, and tomorrow will be when the fruits shall be filled. Nothing will get better in 5 yrs. Zambia has on life support since 1982. We have had fake hope since Chiluba government. Finally we got a president but the government wallet was depleted before he took office. Hh is actually succeeding.
Must we still complain that ‘the government wallet was depleted before he took office’. If Zambia had money of its own held somewhere, why did past leaders go borrowing? Leadership is hard, but it calls for strategies and set priorities. Otherwise, we must , continue clinging to our usual ‘fake hope’.
Nothing will get better in 10 neither
With our current aatitude and mentality Id say 40 years
Why not employ the trained teachers as part time teachers a few hours a day for specific lessons until the economy can afford full time teachers. Children like adults like being together they learn from each other. There can even have voluntarys to help out don’t always wait on government at least they made a start it’s always a work in progress which includes the parents and anyone who cares.
Free Education.
Where does education start and end? We are lucking something. Where we not told that it should be from primary to tertiary, university level? Subsidies from fuel were taken to Isn’t it. Why are we still complaining about lack of money? Surely, we can’t cry about both expensive fuel and luck of teachers.
This writer is disingenuous. He is deliberately ignoring the benefits that has been brought to millions of children and the recruitment of tens of thousands of teachers.
No other African country comes close or has anything of that nature taken place in Zambia.Ever
Instead of recognising progress he seeks to be negative.
The man is an idi-t.
Good point. So as parents lets stop our children from going to school. Infact let the pupils strike. (thoughts of a stupid parent)
This author speaks to what has been on my mind for a long time. I cannot add, I cannot subtract.
do you suffer from amnesia or you have dementia? over 40,000 teachers have since been recruited from 2021, so what teacher recruitment are you referring to that “a political party with long term plan” can realize? if it’s PF, then you are politically biased as a hippo is biased towards water because UPND has recruited more civil servants that PF did in 10 years.
More teachers? No! More schools