BarefootLaw Research Team
Legal illiteracy is widely spread in Zambia, with millions of citizens largely unaware of their rights and lacking the empowerment needed to navigate the legal system and exercise their rights [1]. Awareness of the law, available legal remedies in case of disputes, avenues for seeking justice, and access to legal information remain inadequate. This heavily impacts on Zambians use of the justice system to resolve disputes [2,3].
The situation is further worsened by a shortage of lawyers and legal practitioners, along with the limited geographical reach of legal aid services, leaving millions of Zambians with limited access to any form of legal assistance [4]. Overall, the country’s Legal Aid Board has a ratio of 1 lawyer (including Legal Aid Board legal practitioners and legal aid assistants) to 314,815 persons, but this is worse with some provinces only having one Legal Aid Board legal practitioner for the whole province covering over 1,000,000 persons [4,6].
Though promising, the paralegal system in the country is still in its infancy with a limited number of civil society organizations and affiliated paralegals providing legal aid services at community level. The number of active paralegals, which is in the range of 300 – 500 countrywide, is still insufficient to adequately cater for the legal aid needs [6]. The main source of legal information in Zambia are government institutions, which often requires physically retrieval after a longer bureaucratic process or paid subscription. This mode of access is often left for those with legal training and know exactly what they were looking for [3]. While the Parliament publishes all new laws on its website, navigating these laws to identify what is relevant from the chronological list can be difficult for non-legal users.
Innovation
To address and narrow this gap, one lawyer, Peter Mwala Musanshi, through his initiative, Project Legal, located in Obama, Lusaka, Zambia has innovatively used social media to provide access to legal information. This innovation aims to bring the law to the people. It provides a free public and user-friendly access to the law for every Zambian, legal institutions and business. The initiative educates citizens about their rights under the law, empowering them to advocate for themselves and others.
Leveraging social media for legal awareness can be a powerful tool for disseminating legal information and promoting community empowerment. Social media allows for rapid dissemination of information, engagement with diverse audiences including youths among other age groups. Project Legal is proactively using this platform to create legal awareness through sharing various provision of the law from sections of acts of parliaments and explaining how the law addresses various issues including rape, child marriages, incorporation of companies and what makes a will valid under Zambian law. It simplifies legal concepts and uses social media to explain complex legal concepts in simple accessible language – making them easier for public to understand. Importantly, the initiative directs Zambians to relevant documents, online resources and legal aid services. Running for almost 2 years, the initiative has also begun engagements in active discussions online with people that interact with the shared information and provide further explanations where there is need.
Learn more about Peter’s innovation here:
Internet usage in Zambia has grown significantly, particularly in the last decade, with mobile devices driving most of the access. By 2024, Zambia had 11.4 million active internet subscribers and users [7]. With a total population of approximately 23 million people, internet penetration has increased to over 35%. With such a growing internet usage rate, social media presents a new frontier for raising legal awareness. Social media platforms like X (formally Twitter) and WhatsApp can now reach a large number of Zambian including those in remote areas
More recently, as a follow up from the social media engagement including twitter, the initiative is implementing legal tours in secondary and high schools in Zambia. Legal tours are sensitization visits to secondary and high schools around the country with the objective of introducing the students to what the law is while they are in school and teaching them how the law protects them, the obligation the law places on them as children and how they can go about reporting violations of their rights.
Impact
Through this initiative, Zambians have access to legal information in formats and a language that can be easily understood. The information and articles posted on social media (Twitter) are widely read. One article post has had over 3000 views
Example of posts on Twitter
With the information provided, justice seekers are able to actively and meaningfully participate in resolving their conflicts, and address their grievances in a timely and effective manner.
“People are becoming more aware of what the law is, how the law protects them, the obligations that the law places on them, how to report crimes and the rights that they have under the law.” – Peter Mwala Musanshi,
References
- Lobna & Donna. 2025. Zambia – Assessment of Access to Justice and Alternative Dispute Resolution Systems. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43142 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.
- Maines, G., Tembo, N., & Jung, Y. (2022). Conducting Legal Needs Surveys in Zambia: Taking a Contextual Approach
- Masson, M., & Tahir, O. (2016). The legal information needs of civil society in Zambia. J. Open Access L., 4, 1.
- World bank 2022, Public Expenditure and Institutional Review (PEIR), Final Report
- Global Access to Justice Report: Zambia https://globalaccesstojustice.com/global-overview-zambia/
- PMRC 2021, Pmrc Analysis of the National Legal Aid Policy
- UN 2024, https://unsdg.un.org/latest/stories/new-frontiers-zambia-embraces-digital-transformation
- https://globalaccesstojustice.com/global-overview-zambia/
