African Studies Research Seminar - Book launch for Beyond the Horizons: Chipembi School Blazes the Trail for Girls Education and Empowerment in Zambia (Gadsden, 2023)

Conveners: Rebekah Lee and Miles Tendi

Speaker: Shimwaayi Muntemba (independent) in conversation with Peter Brooke (University of Oxford)

Beyond the Horizons: Chipembi School Blazes the Trail for Girls Education and Empowerment in Zambia (Gadsden, 2023) by Shimwaayi Muntemba with Lily Monze

Beyond the Horizons is a history of Chipembi School: its role in the evangelising policies of the Methodist Missionary Society, whose Wesleyan branch founded the school in 1912; its development as the leading school for African girls in the colonial period and the first, and until 1956, the only school to offer secondary education to them. It follows the development of the school after Independence, its initial problems and subsequent successes in academic achievements and agricultural education and production. The book sees education as a powerful tool for women’s liberation and for their own empowerment, and that of their families and communities. It discusses the contribution of the school’s graduates, professionals in many fields, to the development of Zambia, and also documents their humanitarian work.  Above all, it is an account written by two Chipembi girls from the perspective of the girls themselves, illustrating the hardships, yet the fun and joy, their achievements, the friendships, and the faith that sustained so many of them in their years at school and in their later lives.

Shimwaayi Muntemba gained her BA degree at Nottingham, England, her MA at the University of Zambia and her PhD at UCLA in the USA. She served in Zambia as a civil servant and university lecturer. She has worked within the UN system at the International Labour Office, Geneva; The World Bank, Washington, DC; the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, Geneva; and the Environment Liaison Centre International, Nairobi.