Zambia’s Youth and the Fight to Own Their Future

 

From Plantation to Hustle: Why Zambia’s Young People Are Still Fighting to Own Their Future

Author: Rodgers Mangwela

There is a particular kind of tiredness that comes from working all day and still wondering whether you have actually moved forward.

You see it in the young man who wakes up before sunrise in Katondo, hoping that today's customers will be more generous than yesterday's. You see it in the young woman who has turned a small table outside her home into a business because waiting for formal employment stopped being an option a long time ago. You see it in the graduate walking around Kabwe with a folder containing certificates, hoping that somewhere, somehow, somebody will finally say, "We have a job for you."

They are not lazy.

They are not without ambition.

They are part of a generation that has learned to improvise because life has given them very little room for error.

Across Zambia, young people are discovering that education does not always lead directly to employment, employment does not always lead to security, and hard work does not automatically lead to wealth. So they hustle. They sell, drive, farm, create, repair, trade, build, teach, design and search for opportunities wherever they can find them.

The question confronting this generation is becoming harder to ignore: when does a life built around survival finally become a life built around ownership?

A historical shadow, but not the same story

The comparison with plantation slavery requires care.

The brutal system depicted in Mandingo belongs to a very different historical world. Enslaved people were legally treated as property and subjected to forced labour, violence and systematic denial of freedom. Mandingo, the 1975 film based on Kyle Onstott's novel, is a fictional and controversial portrayal of slavery and should not be confused with a historical documentary.

Modern Zambia is not a plantation society, and a young person working in Katondo is not living the life of an enslaved person.

That distinction is fundamental.

Yet historical stories can sometimes give us questions that remain relevant long after the original system has disappeared. One such question concerns the relationship between labour and ownership: who benefits from the work people do, and how much control do they have over the value they create?

That question takes on a different meaning in today's Zambia, where a young person may be legally free but economically constrained by unemployment, poverty, lack of capital or limited opportunities.

The numbers have faces

The statistics surrounding Zambia's youth employment situation can sometimes feel distant until you put a human face to them.

The 2024 Zambia Labour Force Survey estimated youth unemployment among people aged 19–34 at 18.4 percent. The rate was higher among young women, at 20.8 percent, compared with 16.7 percent among young men. Urban youth unemployment was estimated at 21 percent, compared with 15 percent in rural areas. 

But behind every percentage is somebody whose life does not feel like a percentage.

It is the young father who keeps asking friends about vacancies. It is the college graduate who has stopped counting the applications sent without a response. It is the young woman who decides to sell food because staying home and waiting has become more painful than taking a risk.

Eventually, many people stop waiting for the formal economy to rescue them.

They create their own small economies.

That is where the famous African "hustle" begins.

Katondo understands the meaning of hustle

Spend enough time around Katondo in Kabwe and you begin to understand that the word hustle is not merely a fashionable expression borrowed from social media.

It is a way of life.

Someone is selling something.

Someone is repairing something.

Someone is transporting something.

Someone is trying to turn a skill into an income.

There is ingenuity everywhere. A person with little capital may start with whatever is available, reinvest a small profit and gradually try to grow. Another person may use a mobile phone as an office, a marketing department, a classroom and a shop all at once.

There is something admirable about that resilience.

But there is another side that deserves to be discussed honestly.

Not everybody hustles because they dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur.

Some people hustle because they could not find a job.

That difference matters.

When entrepreneurship becomes a necessity rather than a choice, the word can sometimes make economic hardship sound more glamorous than it really is.

When hard work becomes a survival strategy

We often tell young people to work hard.

There is nothing wrong with that advice. Discipline, persistence and determination matter enormously.

But hard work needs an environment in which it can produce something.

Imagine a young person who spends twelve hours every day running a tiny business. If almost everything earned goes towards food, transport, rent and other immediate expenses, there may be very little left to invest back into the business.

The person is working.

The person is surviving.

But the person may not be accumulating wealth.

This is one of the great challenges hidden behind hustle culture.

The World Bank has described Zambia's labour market as being dominated by subsistence agriculture and informal services, with many workers earning low incomes. Its research on youth economic disengagement also shows the importance of understanding the difference between simply being economically active and having productive, secure opportunities. 

A person can be busy without getting ahead.

That may be one of the hardest truths about the modern hustle.

Kabwe and the forgotten promise of opportunity

Kabwe carries its own complicated history of work.

The town grew around mining and railway activity and became an important industrial centre. For generations, employment and economic activity were closely connected to the industries surrounding the town.

But economies change.

Industries decline, jobs disappear and communities are forced to adapt.

Today, a young person growing up in Kabwe may inherit the memory of a town that once offered a different kind of economic promise while facing a present in which finding stable employment can be difficult.

World Bank research on Zambia's young people has specifically highlighted skills and economic disengagement, including an example involving a young person working in a pot-making factory in Kabwe. 

That story is important because it reminds us that youth employment is not simply about whether someone is doing something.

The deeper question is whether what they are doing gives them a realistic pathway to a better future.

Entrepreneurship cannot solve everything

Entrepreneurship has become one of the most powerful words in discussions about Africa's future.

And there is a good reason.

Across Zambia, young people are starting businesses with remarkably little. They are selling clothes online, producing food, designing graphics, making music, farming, repairing phones and offering services through social media.

Some of these businesses will grow.

Others will disappear.

Failure does not necessarily mean the entrepreneur lacked determination. A small business can be crushed by lack of capital, expensive transport, weak demand, unreliable infrastructure or simply the difficulty of competing in a market where customers themselves have limited purchasing power.

That is why telling every unemployed young person to "start a business" is not enough.

Zambia needs entrepreneurs, but it also needs industries, investment, skills, infrastructure and jobs that allow people to build stable lives.

The World Bank's Zambia Country Partnership Framework for 2024–2029 identifies better jobs, human capital, skills development and entrepreneurship among its priorities.

In other words, individual effort and the wider economy cannot be separated.

The young people working for "exposure"

There is another story that rarely gets enough attention.

It is the story of the young person who works without pay because somebody has promised that the experience will eventually lead somewhere.

Sometimes that promise becomes reality.

A young photographer might gain a portfolio. An aspiring journalist might gain experience. A student might learn from an experienced professional. An artist might build a network.

But there is a difference between learning and being used.

Young people need to learn how to ask difficult questions about their own labour. What am I learning? What experience am I gaining? Who benefits from my work? Is there a realistic pathway towards paid employment or growth?

Their time is valuable.

Their creativity is valuable.

Their skills are valuable.

And understanding that value is itself a form of education.

Why Openlearnzambia belongs in this conversation

This is where education outside the traditional classroom becomes important.

For a young person in Kabwe, Katondo or another Zambian community, learning does not have to end when formal schooling ends. The internet has created opportunities to learn skills that were once difficult to access.

Openlearnzambia can be part of that wider culture of continuous learning by connecting learners with accessible educational resources and knowledge.

The idea is simple but powerful: if the economy is changing, the skills of the people entering it must also evolve.

A certificate remains important, but today's young person may also need digital literacy, financial knowledge, communication skills, marketing ability, research skills and an understanding of technology.

The World Bank has identified foundational skills and stronger pathways into education and employment as important parts of addressing youth economic disengagement in Zambia. 

Education cannot guarantee a job.

But education can expand the number of doors a person knows how to knock on.

When the dream becomes leaving Zambia

There are young people who eventually decide that their future lies somewhere else.

Perhaps it is Johannesburg.

Perhaps it is London.

Perhaps Dubai, Australia or another country where they believe better opportunities might exist.

Migration is not automatically a failure of patriotism. People move for education, employment, family and opportunity, and migration can bring valuable skills and income.

But a country should also be able to ask itself an uncomfortable question:

What would make a young Zambian want to build a future here?

The answer cannot simply be a motivational speech about loving one's country.

Young people need opportunities.

They need productive industries, functioning markets, relevant skills, access to finance and a realistic chance of turning work into a stable life.

The journey from hustle to ownership

Perhaps this is where Zambia's conversation about youth employment needs to go next.

We should stop measuring success only by whether young people are busy.

We should ask whether they are building something.

A musician needs to understand who owns the master recording.

A designer needs to understand intellectual property.

A farmer needs to understand markets and value chains.

A trader needs to know the difference between sales and profit.

A freelancer needs to understand contracts.

A student needs to understand that education is not merely a certificate but a tool that can be converted into skills, services, businesses and opportunities.

The goal should not be to create a generation that is exceptionally good at surviving.

It should be to create a generation that can eventually own.

The real African dream

Tomorrow morning, someone in Katondo will open a shop.

Someone in Kabwe will search for work.

Someone in Lusaka will send another job application.

Someone will start a small business with money that took months to save.

Someone will sit behind a phone and try to turn an idea into an income.

They will probably not think about labour-market statistics.

They will simply think about tomorrow.

And that is what makes this story so deeply human.

Behind the debate about unemployment, entrepreneurship and informal work are people trying to give themselves and their families a better life.

They do not need to be told that they are not working hard enough.

They are already working.

What they need is an economy in which their effort can accumulate into something more than another day's survival.

The historical plantation and today's hustle economy are not the same thing, and pretending that they are would diminish the suffering of those who endured slavery.

But history can still teach us to examine the relationship between labour, freedom and ownership.

For Zambia's young people, perhaps the next chapter of the dream should be bigger than simply making it.

It should be about learning.

Building.

Creating.

Owning.

And leaving something behind that tells the next generation that all those early mornings and difficult nights were not wasted.

The African dream should not be a life spent proving that we can survive hardship. It should be the freedom to turn our hard work into a future of our own.