ActionAid Zambia Expresses Concern Over Decline in Education, Health Budgets in 2025

ActionAid Zambia has expressed concern over the decline in the Education budget from 15.4 percent in 2024 to 14.5 percent in 2025.

Reflecting on the 2025 national budget, Organization Country Director, Faides TembaTemba noted in a statement that this falls short of the UNESCO’s recommended 20 percent for developing countries and is misaligned with the Transforming Education Summit (TES) commitments for education financing.

Ms. TembaTemba is also concerned that the health sector budget has reduced from 11.8 percent this year to 10.7 percent in 2025, which falls short of the Abuja declaration to ensure 15% of the total national budget is allocated to health.

She however commended government for increasing the allocation for social protection, which has almost doubled with the scaling up of the social cash transfer and the introduction of Cash for Work programme.

Meanwhile, Ms. TembaTemb urged government to reassess the national budget allocation for 2025 considering the ongoing El Nino drought and the possibility of the La Nino for 2024/2025 season, which has severely impacted agriculture, energy, health, and transportation.

“The current 0.7% allocation from 0.8% for 2024 for Environmental Sustainability is inadequate and shows lack of consistency towards climate action for progressive realization of people’s needs, particularly 90% of smallholder farmers, SME’s, young women, children, and youths affected by recurrent droughts and floods,” Ms. TembaTemba stated.

Ms. TembaTemba observed that the 2025 national budget is a clear pronunciation of austerity as projected in decreased share of social spending which will have grave impact on poor and marginalized communities, as well as undermining social welfare