What happens when opportunities exist, but people do not know how to reach them?
An opportunity can exist and still be inaccessible.
A young person may qualify for a business support programme but never apply because they did not know it existed. A farmer may be eligible for a government service but not know where to register. A community may have a right to participate in decisions affecting its resources but lack the information needed to understand when, where or how to participate. In each of these situations, the opportunity technically exists. Yet for the person who never receives, understands or trusts the information needed to access it, the opportunity might as well not exist.
This is an often-overlooked dimension of development: the gap between what is available and what people know is available.
Development discussions rightly focus on barriers such as poverty, inadequate infrastructure, limited financing and poor access to services. But information can also determine whether people are able to take advantage of the opportunities, rights and services around them.
And in a country as youthful as Zambia, this matters enormously. According to the 2022 Census of Population and Housing, about 63 percent of Zambia's population is below the age of 25, meaning that access to relevant and usable information is increasingly connected to how young people navigate education, employment, entrepreneurship and civic participation.
When Information Exists but Does Not Reach People
It is tempting to think that once information has been published, communication has been achieved. A notice is posted on a website. A press release is issued. A social media post goes live. A meeting is held in a district centre.
However, it is a fact that publication is not the same as access.
Zambia's digital landscape illustrates this clearly. ZICTA's 2022 National ICT Survey found that most internet users accessed the internet through mobile broadband on their phones, while differences remained between rural and urban users and in the ways people accessed connectivity. More recent estimates also illustrate why digital communication alone cannot be the answer. DataReportal estimated that only 31.2 percent of Zambia's population used the internet at the beginning of 2024, meaning a large proportion of the population remained offline.
The lesson is not that digital communication is ineffective. It is that one channel alone cannot carry every message to everyone.
A Facebook post may reach an urban entrepreneur but miss a farmer in a rural community. A website may contain important information that never reaches someone who does not regularly use the internet. A technical policy document may be publicly available but remain practically inaccessible to someone who cannot easily understand its language.
The question therefore should not simply be: "Have we published the information?"
It should be: "Can the people who need this information actually find, understand and use it?"
The Last Mile Is Not Always a Road
Development practitioners are familiar with the idea of the "last mile": the final distance that must be covered for a service, product or infrastructure to reach the people who need it.
There is an information last mile too. A policy can reach a ministry but not a community. A funding opportunity can reach an organisation but not the young people it is intended to support. Information about a public service can exist online without reaching the people who need that service most. This is where communication becomes more than publicity. It becomes part of implementation itself.
If a new programme is designed to benefit young entrepreneurs, communication should not be something added after the programme has been designed. The people who are expected to participate need to know what the opportunity is, who qualifies, where to access it, what is required and what happens next.
The same applies to civic participation. Zambia's Access to Information Act, 2023 formally provides for the right to access information and establishes procedures for requesting information.
But having a legal right to information is one part of the equation. People also need to know that the right exists and understand how they can exercise it.
A person can hear about an opportunity and still be unable to act. Perhaps the application process is too complicated. Perhaps the information is only available in a language they do not easily understand. Perhaps they do not have internet access. Perhaps they need documentation they do not know how to obtain. Perhaps they have questions but do not know who to ask.
From Information to Action. This is where the conversation needs to move beyond simply "raising awareness." This means effective communication should be designed around the action that information is supposed to enable.
[] If the objective is to help farmers access a service, communication should explain the steps
involved.
[] If the objective is to encourage young people to apply for an opportunity, the message should
make eligibility and application procedures clear.
[] If the objective is to strengthen civic participation, people need information that helps them
understand not only their rights but also how, when and where they can exercise them.
The measure of success should therefore shift from: "How many people received the message?"
to: "What were people able to do because they received it?"
Who Is Responsible for Closing the Gap?
Closing information gaps cannot be left to one institution:
[] Government has a responsibility to make public information accessible and understandable.
[] Civil society organisations can help translate complex policies, programmes and opportunities
into information that communities can use.
[] The media can take information beyond institutional audiences, while
[] Community structures can help move information through trusted local networks.
Communities themselves are also more than recipients of information. They can become information hubs, sharing knowledge about opportunities, services and rights within their own networks.
This is particularly important where trust matters. People do not always act on information simply because it comes from an official source. They may seek clarification from a community leader, local organisation, teacher, health worker, religious leader, peer or someone they already trust. That means reaching communities effectively requires more than choosing the right platform. It requires understanding who people listen to, how they receive information and what prevents them from acting on it.
Communication Should Not Be an Afterthought
Too often, communication is treated as the final layer of a development project: design the intervention, implement the activities and then communicate the results. But if information determines whether people can access opportunities, understand their rights or participate in decisions, communication belongs much earlier in the process.
[] It should be considered when interventions are designed.
[] It should inform how communities are engaged.
[] It should shape how information is translated and shared, and
[] It should be evaluated by whether people were able to use what they learned.
The information gap may not always be visible. There is no broken road to point to, no unfinished building and no empty classroom. Yet its consequences can be just as real.
A programme may remain underutilised because people do not know about it. A service may reach fewer people than intended because the information about accessing it never travelled beyond the district office. A young person may miss an opportunity simply because the message arrived too late or never arrived at all.
Closing the Gap
Development is often about bringing resources closer to people. But resources are only useful when people can find them, understand them and act on them. That is why information should be recognised not simply as something development organisations produce, but as a resource that can expand people's ability to make choices and participate in opportunities.
The challenge before us is therefore not simply to communicate more. It is to communicate better, earlier and closer to where people live. This is because an opportunity that exists but cannot be found is not truly accessible - and a right that people do not know how to exercise cannot fully empower them. The real measure of communication is not how many people received the message. It is how many people were able to do something with it.
For more information, please feel free to reach out via info@zgf.org.zm
