Carrying More Than Water: How Zambian Youth Are Shaping Their Water Future
- Kachusha Nkosha
- 8 hours ago
- 3 min read
Every morning across Zambia, thousands of young people begin their day with water.
Some walk long distances to collect it before school. Others queue at communal taps, hoping the water does not run out before their turn. Some arrive late for class because household responsibilities come first. For many girls, inadequate water and sanitation facilities quietly shape their education, health, dignity, and future.
For years, these stories were treated as ordinary.
But ordinary does not mean acceptable. As a young WASH advocate, I have learned that the greatest water crisis is not only about infrastructure. It is also about whose voices are missing when decisions are made. Young people are often described as beneficiaries of water projects, yet we are rarely invited to become designers, decision-makers, or communicators of water solutions.
That began to change through the Youth WASH Ambassadors Club in Zambia.
Our work did not start with drilling boreholes or constructing toilets. It started by listening.
We visited schools, communities, universities, and youth spaces. We asked simple questions: What prevents young people from accessing safe water? Why are girls missing school during menstruation? Why are some water points abandoned? What solutions already exist within communities?
The answers revealed that water is connected to everything.
It influences education because children cannot learn when they spend hours collecting water. It affects health because unsafe water spreads preventable diseases. It shapes gender equality because women and girls carry a disproportionate burden of water collection and menstrual hygiene management. It affects climate resilience because droughts and floods are becoming more frequent.
Most importantly, we discovered that young people already understood these problems. What they lacked was a platform.
So we created one.
Today, young people are leading awareness campaigns, facilitating community dialogues, producing digital content, organizing clean-up activities, advocating for better sanitation in schools, and engaging local leaders with practical recommendations. They are not simply participating—they are influencing conversations that once excluded them.
One moment stays with me.
During a community dialogue, a university student stood up and confidently explained how unreliable water access affected attendance for girls in her university. She did not ask the faculty to solve the problem for her. Instead, she proposed practical improvements and challenged decision-makers to include young people in planning future water projects.
That was more than a speech.
It was leadership.
Moments like these remind me that meaningful youth engagement is not about giving young people a microphone for one event. It is about creating lasting spaces where their experiences become evidence, their ideas shape policy, and their leadership transforms communities.
Water is often measured in litres, pipes, pumps, and infrastructure. But another measurement matters just as much.
How many young people now believe they have the power to protect this resource?
Every campaign we organize, every school we visit, every digital story we publish, and every policy conversation we enter adds another young voice to the movement for water justice.
The future of water security will not be built by engineers and policymakers alone. It will also be built by informed students, community volunteers, young women advocating for menstrual health, youth innovators developing local solutions, and the next generation refusing to accept that unequal access to water is normal.
In Zambia, I have seen that transformation begin. The story is no longer about young people fetching water. It is about young people shaping its future.
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