By Francis Tembo

Zambia is one of the youngest countries in the world. About two-thirds of its population is under the age of 25. For years, this young population has been described as a demographic dividend: an opportunity for a large and productive workforce to drive economic growth.

But a young population does not automatically become an economic advantage. It only becomes one when young people have the skills, opportunities and freedom to participate meaningfully in the economy.

The window for Zambia to get this right will not remain open forever.

Within the next seven to ten years, many of today’s children and teenagers will become adults and enter the labour market. The question Zambia must answer now is simple: are our schools, universities, training institutions and economy being prepared to receive them? At present, the answer is no.

According to Zambia’s 2022 Labour Force Survey, more than 3.3 million young people aged 15 to 35 were not in employment, education or training. This is too large a number to dismiss as a temporary employment problem. It points to a deeper weakness in the relationship between education, skills and the economy.

Young Zambians are more educated than previous generations. Yet many still struggle to find meaningful work. More qualifications have not necessarily created more opportunities. This is not simply a problem of young people failing to find jobs. It is a policy problem that Zambia has allowed to grow slowly.

Zambia Has a Skills Mismatch

Zambia’s economy is changing.

Digital financial services, agricultural technology, logistics platforms and e-commerce are changing how businesses operate and how people work. Technology is no longer limited to companies in the information and communications technology sector. A farmer, accountant, logistics officer, public servant or entrepreneur increasingly works in an environment shaped by digital tools.

Yet Zambia’s education and training systems are not changing at the same pace.

The World Bank’s assessment of skills development for young people in Zambia points to significant challenges in the relationship between skills development and employment. Zambia’s own National Digital Transformation Strategy 2023–2027 also names digital literacy and skills as one of its core pillars, recognising that the country’s economy is becoming increasingly digital.

The scale of the shift is not unique to Zambia. Research by the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank estimates that by 2030, some level of digital skill will be required for 50 to 55 percent of jobs in Kenya, and 35 to 45 percent of jobs in Nigeria, Rwanda and Côte d’Ivoire, and 20 to 25 percent of jobs in Mozambique. (IFC/World Bank, Demand for Digital Skills in Sub-Saharan Africa) Notably, roughly 70 percent of this demand is not for advanced technical expertise but for basic, foundational digital skills, and a further 23 percent is for intermediate skills used outside the ICT sector itself, in farming, retail, logistics and public services. (IFC, 2022) Zambia’s own trajectory is unlikely to be very different.

Zambia has made real progress on connectivity. Active internet subscriptions reached roughly 13 million in 2024, up from far lower levels a decade ago, but barely a third of Zambians are active internet users. (Bridging the Digital Divide: Zambia’s Emerging Tech Frontier) A 2020 FinScope survey found that only 23.6 percent of adults are financially literate, falling to 16.2 percent among adult women. (UNCDF, Bank of Zambia FinScope 2020) These figures matter because digital financial services, such as mobile money, are often the first digital tool a young Zambian encounters in the workplace. A skills strategy that assumes connectivity alone will build capability is starting from the wrong premise.

The skills gap is not simply about whether a graduate knows how to use a computer. It is more specific than that. Employers across sectors increasingly need young people who can reconcile mobile money and digital payment records, use basic spreadsheet and data tools to track stock, sales or yields, operate cloud-based business or farm-management platforms, sell and market through e-commerce and social media channels, and recognise basic cybersecurity and data-protection risks such as phishing and fraud. These are not specialist ICT skills. They are becoming baseline requirements for accountants, farmers, shop owners, logistics staff and public servants alike.

Too many young people leave school, university or training institutions with qualifications but limited practical exposure to these tools. Zambia is producing graduates. But it is not always producing the skills that a changing economy demands.

The economy will not wait for our education system to catch up. Businesses adopting new technologies will look for people who can use them. Where those skills are unavailable, companies may delay expansion, automate certain functions or simply hire fewer people.

The cost will be carried largely by young Zambians.

Education Must Change With the Economy

The first priority is to rethink how digital and practical skills are taught. Digital literacy cannot remain a single course taught to students and forgotten after an examination. It must be integrated into different fields of study.

Economics students should be comfortable working with data and digital research tools. Agriculture students should understand how technology is changing farming, markets and supply chains. Public administration students should be prepared for digital public services. Business students should understand digital commerce and modern business systems.

There are already building blocks to work with. The Digital Learning Passport, developed by the Ministry of Education with UNESCO, UNICEF and Microsoft, now reaches more than 300,000 students with digital, curriculum-based content, including in remote areas. (UN Zambia, New Frontiers: Zambia Embraces Digital Transformation) That kind of platform shows what is possible at the basic education level. The task now is to extend the same intentionality into universities, colleges and technical institutions, where the link between what is taught and what the labour market needs remains weak.

A graduate entering the labour market in 2030 will work in an economy that is more digital than the one we have today. The Ministry of Education, universities and training institutions should be designing for that economy now. But curriculum reform must begin with evidence. Zambia needs a clear understanding of the skills employers and growing industries will require over the next decade.

Government, universities, TEVETA, employers and industry associations should regularly identify skills shortages and use that information to shape training programmes. Zambia should not continue designing courses based largely on what institutions have traditionally taught while the economy moves in a different direction.

Technical Education Is an Economic Asset

Zambia must also rethink how it treats technical and vocational education.

For too long, university education has been presented as the main measure of academic and professional success. Technical and vocational training is often treated as a second option for those who do not enter university. A well-trained technical graduate with practical and verified skills may be more prepared for the labour market than a university graduate whose qualification has little connection to available economic opportunities.

There are signs of what stronger technical education could look like. TEVETA, the European Union and the International Labour Organisation launched a pilot apprenticeship programme in mining, agriculture, energy and tourism, benefiting more than 1,000 young Zambians and combining classroom learning with structured, employer-based training. (TEVETA News) For the 2026 academic year, more than 13,600 students were awarded TEVET bursaries. TEVETA has also been studying Zimbabwe’s competency-based training model for lessons on aligning technical qualifications more closely with what employers actually need. (Ministry of Technology and Science, CBET Workshop) These are useful starting points. But they remain small relative to the scale of the problem, and they need to be sustained, expanded and properly funded rather than treated as pilot projects.

This is not simply about increasing budgets. Training institutions must have modern equipment, instructors who understand changing industry practices and programmes designed with the labour market in mind. Zambia cannot university-degree its way out of a structural skills problem. Technical education is not a consolation prize. It is an economic asset.

Businesses Must Help Build the Workforce They Need

The private sector cannot remain a bystander in this discussion. Companies frequently complain that graduates are not ready for work. But businesses that understand the skills they need must also help build the workforce they expect to hire.

Some companies are already doing this. Hitachi’s work-based learning scheme, for example, has offered dozens of young Zambians structured, on-the-job placements linked to TEVET’s apprenticeship framework. (TEVETA News) Examples like this show that employer-led training is achievable in Zambia. The gap is not proof of concept; it is scale. Too few companies participate, and too little of this activity is coordinated into a national system that employers can plug into easily.

Employers should be involved in designing training programmes, offering structured apprenticeships and giving education institutions clearer information about changing skills needs. The relationship between education and business should not begin when a graduate submits a job application. It should begin while that young person is still being trained.

Structured apprenticeships and workplace learning can help young people gain practical experience before entering the labour market fully. They can also help businesses identify and develop talent. Government’s role should be to remove unnecessary barriers and create an environment where these partnerships can grow.

Skills Alone Will Not Create Jobs

But Zambia must also be careful not to treat skills as the only explanation for youth unemployment. Training millions of young people will mean little if the economy cannot create opportunities for them. A digitally skilled graduate who cannot find a growing company to employ them is still unemployed. A trained technician who faces an economy where businesses struggle to expand will still have limited opportunities.

Skills reform and economic reform must therefore move together. Zambia needs an economy where it is easier for businesses to start, invest, expand and hire. Small and medium-sized enterprises must be able to grow beyond survival. Entrepreneurs should spend more time building businesses and less time navigating unnecessary barriers.

The private sector creates most sustainable employment opportunities. If Zambia wants to absorb its next generation of workers, it must create an environment in which businesses can grow fast enough to employ them. Otherwise, Zambia risks producing a more skilled generation of unemployed young people.

No Young Person Should Be Left Outside the Digital Economy

The rural-urban divide and the gender gap also require deliberate attention.

Young people in rural communities often face greater barriers to digital infrastructure, training and exposure to technology. Zambia’s broader digital transformation challenges, including connectivity and digital skills, have been documented in the World Bank’s Digital Economy Diagnostic for Zambia. Women and girls face additional barriers, including lower device ownership and lower rates of financial literacy, which compound over time into weaker labour market outcomes.

Regional examples show what deliberate inclusion can look like. Kenya’s Ajira Digital Programme has opened training centres across the country to connect young people, including in underserved areas, to digital skills and online work. (INCLUDE Platform, Digital Skills for Youth Employment in Africa) The African Development Bank’s Coding for Employment programme, delivered through university and technical college partnerships across the continent, has reached more than 150,000 young people. (African Development Bank, via AllAfrica) This shows that structured, well-targeted digital skilling can operate at real scale when institutions and development partners coordinate around it. Zambia does not need to copy these programmes exactly, but it should study what has made them reach young people that markets and institutions typically overlook.

A national skills strategy that ignores these differences will simply reproduce existing inequalities in a new economy. Expanding digital skills must therefore include rural training institutions, community-based learning opportunities and deliberate efforts to increase the participation of young women. Zambia cannot build a competitive workforce while leaving millions of young people outside the systems through which modern skills are acquired.

The Cost of Waiting

The children who will form Zambia’s workforce in 2033 are in school today. What they learn now, the investments made in technical education, the apprenticeships businesses create and the reforms government pursues will determine whether they enter an economy ready to use their talents. Structural unemployment becomes far harder to reverse once it is entrenched. Zambia still has time to act—but time itself is not a policy.

The country needs a national labour market skills audit, education and training aligned with real economic demand, a stronger technical education system, deeper partnerships between business and educators, and an economy where enterprises have the confidence to invest and hire. Zambia’s youthful population has the potential to become its greatest economic advantage—but only if today’s policy decisions prepare tomorrow’s workforce. The opportunity is still within reach, but it will not remain open indefinitely.

Francis Tembo is a Research Fellow of the Impact Centre for Policy and Research and a fourth-year Economics student at the University of Zambia.