Qualla: University of Zambia

University of Zambia: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valethatbeatboii, CC BY-SA 4.0. Nelson Mandela had been out of prison for eleven days when he walked onto the University of Zambia campus in February 1990 and addressed the students. It was his first trip abroad since his release, and his first university speech as a free man. That he came to UNZA first was no accident. Zambia had hosted the African National Congress in exile, feeding and housing its leadership through the long decades of the South African struggle at a cost that strained a small country. Mandela was, in a sense, coming to thank the place that had made the unthinkable possible - and to address a generation of Zambian students who had grown up watching the liberation wars to their south from a country that kept the borders open.

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Image: Valethatbeatboii | CC BY-SA 4.0

University of Zambia: A University Born in Argument

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Duke Makangila, CC BY-SA 4.0. UNZA exists because an argument was lost and then won. Plans for a university serving Central Africa had circulated since before the Second World War. When Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders led a 1952 commission into higher education for Africans in the region, the majority report reco...

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Image: Duke Makangila | CC BY-SA 4.0

University of Zambia: The First Chancellor

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LittleT889, CC BY-SA 4.0. The University of Zambia Act was enacted in 1965. Douglas G. Anglin was appointed Vice Chancellor in July of that year. In October, President Kenneth David Kaunda - Zambia's independence leader, three months into his first year of national office - gave formal assent to Act No. 6...

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Image: LittleT889 | CC BY-SA 4.0

University of Zambia: The Liberation University

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LittleT889, CC BY-SA 4.0. From its first decade, UNZA operated in a region at war. Zambia's borders touched Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia, and South West Africa, all of which were fighting wars of independence or against apartheid during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Students at UNZA were reading their text...

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Image: LittleT889 | CC BY-SA 4.0

University of Zambia: A School for a Country

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DFID - UK Department for International Development, CC BY 2.0. UNZA now offers more than 157 undergraduate and postgraduate programs across a full set of faculties - Agricultural Sciences, Engineering, Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, Law, Mines, Medicine, Natural Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, and a Graduate School of Business. It...

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Image: DFID - UK Department for International Development | CC BY 2.0