My husband recently told me a story about a lady who appeared on Oprah and told her story of how she came from a village and was not allowed to go to school. She then taught herself how to read and started doing her brother’s homework and eventually earned a doctorate degree in the United States. I then googled this story and found that the name of that lady is Tererai Trent. It was not an easy road for her because there was opposition for her to go to school but she was so determined to get an education. She now has a foundation that helps impoverished communities in Africa. You can see more of her remarkable story here.
http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Tererai-Trents-Story-Video
I then remembered an article I read a while back where the outgoing Chinese ambassador to Zambia was appealing to the Zambian government to invest in the Education sector if development is to be achieved. He indicated that when education was not emphasised in China, the country’s development was slow with a GDP per capita of $2000 but when it emphasised education, the GDP per capita increased to $7000.
Zambia’s GDP per capita stands at $821.56 as of 2013 (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/zambia/gdp-per-capita). That is a serious disparity with what China had in 1978. Clearly there is something we are missing and I believe former ambassador Yuxio is right.
(http://www.lusakatimes.com/2014/06/16/economy-can-improve-fast-zambia-invests-heavily-education-outgoing-chinese-ambassador/)

Illiterate people cannot contribute to the development of the country hence the call for the Government to invest in the education sector.

I tried to search the web to see what exactly our situation looked like in terms of Education in Zambia and what I found was alarming. Overall in terms of the Human Development Index, Zambia is one of the worst ranked in SADC and when it came to education stats, the picture is quite grim.  These statistics from the UNICEF website and give an overview of how education looks like in the Zambian context. (http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/zambia_statistics.html#0).

I could not find any publications of our own from our indigenous think tanks like the Zambia Institute of Policy Analysis and Research. So it could either mean two things: 1) I may have overlooked it or 2) No official research has been done for Zambia showing how Education has impacted on development and how the educational policies have created an enabling environment for development to happen.
Yes it’s important to celebrate the milestones and having more children accessing primary education is great but there is still the possibility of a girl being married off at 14 and a boy completing his secondary school education but cannot afford to go to university.  And even if there is a population that manages to attain post-secondary school education is it sufficient enough to drive the economy and is what they learn practical enough to use to develop the country? Ambassador Yuxio indicated that he was god-smacked at the fact that Zambia relies on foreigners to develop its mining sector. For him, this was unfathomable and he couldn’t understand why Zambia allows this to happen.  This says a lot about our current education sector and that we still need to do a lot more to ensure that the human capital is relevant and kept abreast with the current prevailing environment for development to occur. With the current stats, it shows we have merely won a battle but not the war.