May 21, 2025: PTF Advisors Tjaarda Storm Van Leeuwen and Robert Liebenthal were recently in Zambia to follow up on the implementation of the “Voice and Accountability: Community Empowerment for Improved Local Service Delivery in Zambia” project. The four year project which began in 2021, and will be completed at the end of June, aims to promote accountable education services in nine districts of the Western and Eastern provinces of Zambia. We have been partnering with Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR) in Zambia to implement this $2.75 million project funded by the Japan Social Development Fund and administered by the World Bank.
Specifically, the project aims to strengthen community awareness and participation with school management and local authorities for accountable primary and secondary education services in these nine districts, with 45 schools and 86,000 beneficiaries targeted. The project uses a range of tools to increase accountability including setting up a Social Accountability Committee (SAC) in each school, administering semi-annual scorecards at each school to determine changes in service delivery, organizing community meetings to consolidate findings, bringing these issues to district education officers to discuss solutions in a public forum, and establishing a dashboard to track project progress and the resolution of complaints.
The latest Semi-Annual Progress Report, covering the second half of 2024, describes a range of activities conducted including:
- Facilitating community and district dialogues and meetings in each of the 45 schools. It enabled communities to identify the main issues contributing to poor service delivery within the schools in their communities. This included long distance to the schools, limited teachers’ housing, dilapidated school infrastructure, poor sanitation, high pupil-teacher ratio, few desks for students, high teacher absenteeism, and underpaid staff. A total of 361 community representatives participated in these meetings. Dialogues with community leaders resulted in an explanation that delays in school constructions were due to the termination of substandard contractors and delays in project fund release.
- Community scorecards were used to engage 5,100 community members in rating education service delivery performance indicators at school level in June 2024. In December 2024, follow-up scorecards assessed changes in the quality of education provision and focused on the development of community action plans that facilitate higher participation and as such, contribute to transparent running of school affairs.
Key challenges identified included:
- Long distances to schools and inadequate school facilities (e.g., limited housing for teachers, poor sanitation) has hindered quality education service delivery in some schools, especially in the western province.
- Teaching materials and textbook delivery have negatively impacted the classroom learning quality experiences.
- Social norms still remain persistent with regards to women participation in the project activities. CSPR continues to encourage women and youth participation especially in positions of leadership so as to help challenge the social and cultural norms prohibiting this demographic’s full participation.
- Effective communication and coordination among community members, civic leaders, and education authorities remain challenging, impacting accountability and responsiveness to community needs.
Lessons learned included:
- Actively involving community members in monitoring education services fosters greater accountability and a sense of ownership among stakeholders.
- Building partnerships with local authorities and education officials allows for better communication and responsiveness to community concerns.
- Early attention to sustainability through planning and stakeholder engagement is crucial for the long-term success of initiatives beyond the project’s lifecycle.
- There is a need to intentionally conduct provincial level engagements which will aim at bridging the information and solution flow gap being experienced today by community school administrations.
