More than half of Zambia's schools still lack the internet access needed to support modern teaching and learning - and the government intends to change that figure significantly within two years. The Ministry of Education has announced plans to bring an additional 2,500 schools online by the end of 2026, framing the push as a central pillar of the country's broader digital transformation strategy. Last week, telecommunications companies and financial institutions formalized their support for the effort during a stakeholder meeting convened by the ministry.
Where Zambia Stands - and How Far It Still Has to Go
The scale of the challenge is visible in the ministry's own data. Of Zambia's 13,987 schools, 8,239 had internet access for administrative purposes by the close of 2025. But the number drops sharply when the measure shifts to teaching and learning: only 5,487 schools had connectivity for classroom use, and just 3,276 were classified as having reliable connections. That distinction matters. Administrative access - used for record-keeping, reporting, and communication between school management and government - tells very little about whether students can open a digital textbook, run educational software, or access a curriculum-aligned platform during class.
Electricity access compounds the problem. Some 5,812 schools had no power supply at all in 2025. Connecting a school to the internet when it has no reliable electricity is not a technical failure - it is a sequencing problem that requires infrastructure investment at multiple levels simultaneously. Any connectivity initiative that does not address the power deficit in parallel risks being incomplete before it begins.
A Platform Already in Use, and What It Reveals
In 2024, more than 300,000 students used the Digital Learning Passport - a platform developed in collaboration with UNESCO, UNICEF, and Microsoft - to study English, mathematics, science, and social studies. The platform offers interactive lessons alongside audio, video, and digitized curriculum-aligned content. The uptake is a meaningful early signal: where access exists and the content is well-structured, students engage with it.
The Ministry of Education's Education Statistics Bulletin 2025 notes that ICT integration enables students to learn at their own pace, removing some of the rigidity of traditional classroom schedules. For learners who carry domestic or economic responsibilities alongside their studies - a reality for many students in sub-Saharan Africa - that flexibility is not an abstract benefit. It is a practical condition for staying in school.
Noriana Muneku, Permanent Secretary for Administration at the Ministry of Education, described the shift in concrete terms: classrooms once limited in resources are now introducing students to digital tools, teachers are broadening how they deliver instruction, and students are gaining access to knowledge that extends beyond what their immediate environment can provide. That framing points to something structural. Connectivity, when it functions, does not merely add a resource - it changes what is possible inside a classroom.
The Risks Embedded in Ambition
Announcing a connectivity target and meeting it are different tasks. The ministry itself acknowledges four categories of challenge: the scale of the rollout, network reliability, availability of physical ICT equipment, and the digital skills of both teachers and students. Each of these is a meaningful constraint in its own right. Together, they form a set of interdependent problems.
A school that receives an internet connection but has no devices for students to use has limited instructional value from that connection. A school with devices and connectivity but with teachers who lack confidence in digital tools will underuse both. Across much of sub-Saharan Africa, training teachers to integrate technology into pedagogy - rather than simply operating it - has proven to be among the more persistent obstacles to edtech adoption. The commitment from telecommunications and financial sector actors is a necessary step, but the durability of the initiative will depend on what happens after infrastructure is installed.
The involvement of international partners alongside private sector actors reflects a recognition that no single institution can carry the full weight of this kind of transformation. But it also means coordination is essential. Fragmented efforts - where connectivity arrives without devices, or devices without teacher training, or training without reliable power - have produced disappointing results in similar programs across the continent. Zambia's plan, to be credible, will need to demonstrate that these components are being built in sequence rather than in isolation.
The Broader Stakes
Zambia is not alone in treating school connectivity as infrastructure rather than a supplementary benefit. Across the African continent, governments have increasingly recognized that digital exclusion at the school level compounds into economic exclusion at the workforce level. Students who complete secondary education without meaningful exposure to digital tools enter labor markets that increasingly require them. The gap does not close on its own.
For Zambia specifically, where the rural-urban divide in resource distribution remains pronounced, connecting remote schools carries implications beyond individual students. It affects teacher recruitment and retention, the quality of assessment and data collection that informs policy, and the long-term capacity of communities to participate in a digitally mediated economy. Whether the 2026 target is met in full, in part, or revised will matter less than whether the systems being built are sustainable once the initial commitment period ends.
