The Zambia National Women’s Lobby (ZNWL) was founded in 1991 to advocate for women’s equal participation in politics and decision-making, helping women not only vote but also run for office, lead campaigns, and influence public policy.

Through civic and voter education, leadership training for aspiring women candidates, and engagement with the Electoral Commission, political parties, traditional leaders, and civil society organisations, ZNWL works to remove barriers to women’s political participation and promote more inclusive and representative elections.

With support from AHEAD Africa, ZNWL will apply its decades of expertise to implement monitoring of Zambia’s 2026 general elections using a gender-responsive checklist created by the Election Support Network for Southern Africa (ESN-SA), helping assess whether the electoral process is inclusive of women before, during, and after election day. As part of this effort, ZNWL will train and deploy 270 monitors across nine districts to conduct election monitoring, produce gender-focused analyses, and use the findings to advocate for more gender-responsive electoral reforms.