KALUWE LIBINGI
AS AN educator who has taught trade mathematics and business education in Botswana’s brigade system, and who now teaches in China’s thriving vocational education environment, I have witnessed how structured, well-supported vocational education transforms lives.
With Zambia’s recent implementation of the competence-based curriculum (CBC), we stand at a critical turning point.
The question is: will we fully embrace vocational education as a first-choice path for our secondary learners, or continue to treat it as second-best?
CBC: A timely opportunity
The CBC encourages practical learning, entrepreneurship, and lifelong skills – ideals that vocational education is built upon.
Yet, we are still placing vocational learners into the same Grade 12 academic examination framework, which was never designed to assess practical skills.
We need a parallel system: a vocational school certificate, aligned with TEVETA and the Zambia Qualifications Framework, assessed through competence-based trade tests, portfolios, and entrepreneurship projects.
This ensures that vocational learners are certified, respected, and able to progress to higher training or employment.
Lessons from Botswana: TheBrigade Blueprint
While teaching in Botswana’s brigade system, I saw vocational training embedded in the secondary school structure. Managed by the Department of Vocational Education and Training, brigades provide practical training in carpentry, agriculture, mechanics and business – producing graduates with recognised, job-ready qualifications.
Brigade learners are not marginalised – they are equipped with the tools to work, earn and innovate. Zambia can adopt this
model by:
• Establishing formal vocational secondary pathways.
• Certifying learners through practical performance, not just theory.
• Involving communities and industries in curriculum design.
Insights from China: Respect, structure, progression
Currently, I teach in China, where vocational education is not an afterthought – it is a prestigious, structured system that serves nearly half of all secondary scholars.
Schools partner directly with industries, and vocational learners progress to technical colleges and universities.
In China, being a technician, chef, coder, or builder is respected.
Zambia should replicate this by:
• Promoting vocational careers in the media.
• Encouraging industry-school partnerships.
• Making vocational schools as well equipped and staffed as academic ones.
Provincial relevance: Vocational skills for local economies
Drawing on my regional work and research, vocational training must reflect local economic strengths.
Each of Zambia’s provinces has unique opportunities for specialised trades.
Tailored examples:
• Eastern Province: Focus on agribusiness, irrigation systems, food processing.
• Copperbelt and North Western: Offer mine safety, equipment repair, metal fabrication and food processing.
• Southern and Western:
Tourism-based trades like hospitality, guiding, catering, livestock care, leather crafting, reed-based furniture.
• Luapula and Northern: Aquaculture, boat repair, sustainable fishing techniques.
• Lusaka: ICT, logistics, media, graphic design, and entrepreneurship.
• Muchinga: With large forests and farms, emphasise forestry, organic farming, sawmilling, and agro-processing.
• Central Province: A mixed economy ideal for dairy production, mechanical repairs, grain storage, and solar installation.
By aligning training with local industries, we can improve employability and encourage young people to build lives in their home
regions.
What Government should do: Infrastructure, capacity, and policy
If Zambia is to take vocational education seriously, we must invest at multiple levels. From my experience across Botswana and China, here are what are critical:
*Create more vocational teacher training colleges to develop instructors who are both technically skilled and pedagogically trained.
*Expand technical colleges to absorb learners from both academic and vocational secondary pathways.
*Introduce secondary-level vocational wings in existing trades institutes across provinces.
*Develop a respected vocational school certificate, aligned with TEVETA, CBC, and international
standards.
*Ensure equity by giving vocational learners access to bursaries, tools, learning materials, and mentorship – just like their academic peers.
*Strengthen partnerships between vocational institutions, private sector employers, and community cooperatives for real-world experience.
*Launch national campaigns to shift public perception and highlight vocational success stories.
A personal perspective: Why I advocate for this My years of teaching in
Botswana showed me how vocational education, when systematised and supported, becomes a driver of dignity, purpose and growth.
In China, I see vocational students graduate into modern industries – well paid, respected, and upwardly mobile. These experiences have convinced me that
Zambia does not lack potential – it needs policy courage and targeted investment.
Let us give our learners a meaningful choice.
Let us give vocational education the structure, funding and status it deserves.
With CBC as our foundation, we have a golden opportunity to reimagine secondary education in Zambia.
If we build a dual-pathway system, where both academic and vocational learners have clear, dignified routes to progress, we will unlock a skilled, creative and entrepreneurial generation.
Vocational education is not for the less able – it is for the practically gifted, the technically minded, the builders of tomorrow.
Let us treat it with the national importance it deserves.
The author is an international educator currently teaching in China, licensed in British Columbia, Canada, with a doctorate in business administration.
