Zambia's Upcoming Election will see Young Voters Decide whether to keep Hichilema in Power

Zambia has an upcoming presidential election on August 12, with current President Hakainde Hichilema asking the Zambian constituency to re-elect him. In 2021, he won 59 percent of the vote with a strong youth turnout. Young Zambians who were exhausted by economic stagnation and the threat of authoritarianism mobilized to protect their vote. Two-thirds of the population of Zambia is under 35, and the youth bloc is what makes up the majority of the electorate. Five years after Hichilema’s initial election, the verdict of whether he will stay in power or not is a foregone conclusion.

The Promise Hichilema Delivered On

Hichilema's strongest claim on young voters is a concrete success from his presidency. He rolled out one of the most ambitious social policy shifts in the country’s history, creating free education from primary to secondary school by abolishing tuition and examination fees. Since Hicilema’s United Party for National Development (UPND) enacted it in 2022, more than 2.3 million students have entered the school system, with over 40,000 teachers hired and a record of 70 percent of students passing Grade 12. For university students, Parliament reinstated meal allowances that had been previously scrapped and increased bursaries for major schools. Finally, Parliament passed the Education Bill turning free education into a legal right, safeguarding it from any future government action.

Hichilema is running on these achievements to appeal to young Zambians for a second term, and his campaign has framed them in stark terms: "If we don't keep this UPND government, these 2.5 million children will go back home and out of school". Hichilema has invoked the nation's memory of a past without access to education in order to oppose the groups running against him.

Where Hichilema Falls Short

Unfortunately, Hichilema has only fulfilled half of his promise to young Zambians. While he undoubtedly improved the quality and accessibility of education, the employment rate is dramatically low. Youth unemployment runs very high in Zambia, and cost-of-living pressures have exacerbated the problem. This tension – housing becoming more expensive, jobs becoming more scarce – has become the biggest critique of Hichilema’s government in their first term. Young Zambians are grateful for schooling, but also desperate for work. Graduating into an economy with nowhere to go, Zambian youth have demanded more from the government than they did in 2021.

This overall mood regarding how the government has bolstered young people economically and in the labor force is visible in the numbers that precede the vote. Voter registration has been sluggish, prompting warnings of voter fatigue, political apathy, and disillusionment with the government. When young people believe their vote will not change much, they stop showing up to the polls altogether. The danger for Hichilema, then, is not that young Zambians will resort to voting for opposition groups, but rather that the energy that carried his election in 2021 dissipates entirely.

More Power to Run, Less Power to Vote

Another factor influencing electoral politics in Zambia is the youth movement toward overturning seats in government themselves, filling roles commonly held by more senior officials. In other words, young Zambians are no longer content with being the targets of campaigns, and instead, they hold a conviction that their time to govern is now, especially with such a large majority in the nations’ population. Recent constitutional amendments requiring that 15 seats in the government must go to youth have furthered young Zambians’ goals of increasing representation, reflecting a generation (and a majority) unwilling to be sidelined in formal politics.

Nonetheless, that young ambition runs up against a darkening backdrop of Zambian elections. Zambia's reputation as a democratic success story is fraying, as dissent and protests have become increasingly monitored and shut down by the government. This includes suppressing opposition groups, regulating political activity, gerrymandering, and frequently blocking rallies from occurring under a colonial-era public order law. Young voters have increasingly become worried that the government they elected in 2021 is reverting to historically harmful tactics to wield political power. Subsequently, the risk of the election in August becoming shaped by governmental maneuvering rather than the ballot is a possible one.

What the Upcoming Election will Reveal

Hichilema is favored to win the upcoming election, leading with 60 percent against a combined opposition at 35 percent, and the opposition remains mostly fragmented. For Zambia's youth, August 13 is less a choice between two men than a referendum on whether the promise of 2021 was kept. While Hichilema’s free education initiatives say it was, empty job markets say it hasn't been kept yet. Broadly, this election has major significance for the future of Zambian democracy. The young generation that once turned out to protect a vote, making their majority known, will decide whether that vote was worth protecting. In a young democracy showing signs of strain, young Zambians will seek answers to whether their participation still bends the country toward the future they were promised.