Organisation Development and Community Management Trust (ODCMT) is a local NGO registered in March 2000 to provide assistance building the capacity of civil society to enhance their missions. The organisation undertakes popular campaign activities on poverty and trade issues, offers short-term development skills training courses and provides information and advisory services to leaders and members of civil society. In the last four years the organisation has managed to build and consolidate its capacity to gain a reputation as an alternative training resource institution to universities and colleges in the provision of practical skills training services to development practitioners.

Parents with children in public primary schools had paid Sh2.64 million in "school fees" by early last year, despite a Government directive that made primary education free and compulsory. The directive was effected early last year but some schools continued to charge fees. The questionable payments were detected by an audit firm commissioned by the Government to establish the impact of a donor funded book project. Carried out in 25 districts countrywide to establish how the project was working, it discovered that nearly a quarter of the country's 18,000 schools had been charging fees. Parents were being forced to pay the money to the district education boards to finance "mysterious" projects.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called for more commitment to the provision of an enabling environment for quality education. UNICEF country representative, Stella Goings, said in an interview that the nation should do more to enable children to acquire quality education. Dr Goings said UNICEF was recognisant that the Zambian Government was doing a lot with scarce resources to make sure that the children got the best education. She said UNICEF was committed to helping the government realise that dream, but called for more dedication from the government to make sure that Zambia produced educated leaders and professionals.