In real terms since the early 1990s, the government has not prioritized education and there has been little investment in rehabilitation of school infrastructure, construction of new schools, training of education managers, procurement of supplies and materials, and adequate pay for trained teachers to staff schools. Main gains have been in improving girl enrollment, and net enrollment of girls has improved by approximately 25 percent since 2000. Still, the HIV and AIDS pandemic has further exacerbated the situation, for instance in 1999 more teachers died from an AIDS related illness than passed through the teachers training schools. Moreover, at present it is estimated that there are approximately one million orphans in Zambia in need of education services. In an effort to improve access to education, the government introduced free basic education initiatives for all Zambian children. The government promised to add 8,000 more teachers to take on this increase in service provision, and enrollment rates have increased to over two million enrolled. Still there are not enough teachers and schools to meet the demand, and considering that the children under 18 comprise over 50 percent of the population (estimated at 10 million), then there is a significant gap and most likely a high percentage of orphans are within the non-beneficiary category. Some other issues with the current educational system are:
• •
Very few children and especially girls in the rural areas have the opportunity to go to secondary school; and There is much discrepancy between the educational system indicators/test results in the rural vs. urban areas.
Health The national health system has a formal sector and an informal sector. The formal sector comprises government run services and private services. The private services include hospitals and clinics run by the mining conglomerate, Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM), as well as services run by missionaries ands private individuals. One of the main differences between the government run services and the private services is that government services are essentially free to the user while users have to pay the costs of all services in private set ups. However, there is now a move to encourage
22