BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM
There’s a particular kind of law that changes nothing overnight. The classrooms look the same the morning after it passes. The teachers haven’t changed. The children getting on buses are the same children who got on buses yesterday. But something has shifted underneath: what was once a promise has become a right.
Zambia passed one of those laws this month. President Hakainde Hichilema signed the Education (Amendment) Act 2026, writing free public education into the country’s legal framework for every child from early childhood through secondary school. The policy has existed since 2022. But now, it cannot be unwound by the next government. A future administration would need parliamentary approval to reverse it.
From policy to protection
When Zambia abolished school fees in 2022, the results were immediate. More than 2.6 million children returned to school, according to government figures. For many families, the fee had been the barrier. Remove it, and the children show up.
But a government policy is only as durable as the government that holds it. Vice-President Mutale Nalumango framed the new legislation as deliberate insulation against exactly that risk: 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. That distinction may prove to be the law’s most lasting contribution.
The scale of what’s already changed
The education figures Zambia has released in recent years are striking. In 2025, the country recorded a 70 percent Grade 12 pass rate, its highest on record. The government has also expanded classroom construction, recruited additional teachers, and grown school feeding programs that now support millions of learners.
Officials point to these figures as evidence that access and outcomes can improve together. Education researchers are more measured: the real test is whether investment continues to keep pace with enrolment as more children enter a system that was already under pressure before 2022.
What the rest of the continent’s experience suggests
Zambia is not the first African country to pursue free education at scale. Ghana’s Free Senior High School program brought a surge in enrolment after 2017, but also created enough overcrowding that authorities introduced a double-track system to manage the load. When Kenya abolished primary school fees in 2003, millions of new pupils arrived almost overnight. Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Malawi, and South Africa have all attempted different versions of fee-free schooling, each confronting the same underlying tension: getting children through the door is the easier half of the problem.
The harder half is what happens once they’re inside. Class sizes, teacher quality, whether rural communities are served as well as urban ones: these are the variables that determine whether a legal right to education becomes a meaningful one.
What comes next
The law is a floor, not a ceiling. Zambia has guaranteed the right. What it builds on top of that guarantee will determine whether 2026 is remembered as a turning point or a paperwork milestone.
For the 2.6 million children who came back to school after 2022, the question is less abstract. They are already there. The new law is, among other things, a promise to them that the door will stay open.
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