🇿🇲 EXCLUSIVE | Hichilema Meets SEA of Copperbelt Students as Education Takes Centre Stage
Arthur Davies Stadium in Kitwe does not usually look like this.
By mid-morning, the 20,000-capacity arena had filled with students dressed in white, waving placards reading “Students for Bally” and “HH 2026.” The turnout was not symbolic. It was strategic.
The Copperbelt remains Zambia’s most unpredictable electoral battleground, and in an election year, optics matter.
President Hakainde Hichilema’s one-day working visit to the province has quickly evolved into more than a courtesy engagement. It is a calibrated political moment anchored on one of his administration’s most consequential policies: education reform.
Students from public and private institutions across the Copperbelt gathered not merely to cheer, but to engage. Meal allowances. Accommodation deficits. Infrastructure backlogs. Youth unemployment. Skills development gaps. These are not abstract issues. They are lived realities.
The National Council of Students has indicated its intention to formally table concerns affecting learners.
Education has become the New Dawn administration’s most defensible legacy pillar. Since 2021, government policy removed school fees at primary and secondary level, expanded higher education loans and bursaries, and significantly increased tertiary funding allocations.
Speaking Friday at Parliament, the President reiterated that education is “the best investment, the best equaliser, and the best inheritance we can give our children.
On the Copperbelt, those words are not rhetorical. They intersect with political memory. The region has historically swung elections. It punished incumbents in 2011. It turned decisively in 2021.
Will 2026 see a flip?
The stadium images tell their own story. Thousands of young voters, many first-time participants in a general election, are now central actors in the national conversation. Youth demographics are not marginal. They are decisive.
But engagement alone does not translate to votes. Students are also asking harder questions. What happens after graduation? Are loans sustainable? Will skills programmes align with industrial expansion in mining and manufacturing? How does education convert into employment in an economy still recalibrating?
The President’s challenge on the Copperbelt is therefore dual. Consolidate goodwill built through free education. Convince young voters that opportunity will follow access.
As Zambia approaches August 13, 2026, the education file may well become the re-election fulcrum. And on a day when a sea of students gathered in Kitwe, the political message was unmistakable.
The campaign season has entered the lecture hall.
© The People’s Brief | Ollus R. Ndomu
These fake rallies full of paid cadres remind me of PF rallies just before 2021 elections. PF rallies were even much bthey show fake love. But when it comes to vote, they eject incompetent tribalist leadership. History shall repeat itself, insha Allah. I wonder how many buses transported these cadres from Southern province to come show someigger. People just attend to get paid and love to their Herdman.
REJECT TRIBALISM, CORRUPTION AND OPPRESSION.
VOTE FOR CHANGE IN AUGUST.
#MUNYAULE DEALER WA GOLD.
Continue to dream, Congolese/Tanzanian. Yowa PF is not returning; what a fool, lacking the shame to display such ignorance. Some screws are missing. Your upbringing in Congo has adversely affected you, with daily conflicts and violence among one another, resulting in a lamentable existence. Zambia will never resemble your homeland of Congo or Tanzania.
The same placards printed for them, the same colour t shirts printed for them. Fully sponsored rally probably paid for by state funds. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Pay for your cadres also.Just showing administration or disgust from a distance. I am not voting for change, am voting for someone with a programme. And the programme cannot be REMOVE!
Uselessly Tyrol. Why do you always bring out nonsense from your teeth every time you talk? Did you see vehicles transporting people from Southern province? Is it only southern province which has got students? I know you just want comfort yourself by saying HH has got no support in CB. You are a day dreamer my friend. For your information HH is very popular in every province. Do not just marginalized him to only a single province. Even the last elections there are province like north western which hit higher than southern province, this tells you how HH is popular in all corners of the country. Whether you like it or not HH is winning in 2026 again with big margin. The environment tells more than your imagination. Take time and read the wind how it moves. Time for him to be removed is not yet.
I want free education into law now before parley dissolves, am almost disappointed on this one
Those who have decided to live in denial can can continue, HH and UPND ni forward chabe. HH won Copperbelt in 2021 and this year, 2026 he will still win it, you can continue living in denial until 2041.