It features news from universities, colleges, trade schools and other higher education institutions as well as Zambian students learning abroad. Higher learning institutions in Zambia are hives of activity that lie between the child pursuing the general certificate of education and the adult in office and business. These institutions, aside from training students in academic disciplines, also from
the largest center of interaction for young adults, universities, colleges and other institutions are in youthful language ‘one big get-together party’ where ideas and thoughts are always being generated, discussed and communicated. Traditionally, in Zambia’s higher learning institutions, there is a bias towards generating ideas and a neglect on communicating them. Student associations are rife, formed on the basis of academic, social or religious homogeneity. But thought is a fickle things, like the wind, here one minute and gone the next, by passage of time and length of distance, the thought is blown away, and it is as if it was never there. To the best of our knowledge students in Zambia, at present, have no medium to communicate and interact on a basis other than mere socializing. The ability to record thought and communicate it is the basis of human civilization, the very gap that apes cannot bridge. To record thought and communicate it is to progress, is to build, is to take the next step in that journey supposedly of a thousand miles (you’d think the one who said it had actually made the journey). Again, it is tragic, and it holds back our progress as a people that we should think in isolation, separated by imaginary walls, and illusory barriers, unable to ask the person next to you, to learn, to communicate, to inform, to reach out, and to civilize. A hand reaches out from the grave of ignorance, clutching at our heels, preventing the union of thought, the spark of interaction, the big bang that would arise from the collision of our thought. Think, what possibilities exist, when Zambia’s intellectual community can think together. That possibility is what drives Blackback Storm, and that possibility is the reason we create Higher Learning Newspaper. Higher learning is a weekly student newspaper, made by and for students. It is an e-newspaper available in pdf format and can be downloaded for free from a link provided by our page. Higher Learning is also distributed free via email. The newspaper features a page from all or otherwise most of the above institutions, as news coverage and reception may allow. In addition, Higher Learning newspaper carries an academic paper each week, from whichever discipline it may be, provided it is of value to our readers. The newspaper offers columns to student associations and distinguished students to express their thought. To support student activity, the newspaper offers free classified adverts for student events, students buying and selling things, and associations meeting during the week. Higher learning newspaper would not be complete without letters, and so dedicates significant attention to them. The newspaper page is contemporary in look and appeal, entertaining, newsworthy, and thought-provoking. No newspaper like it is available today. It is the progress of people. Minds will think, mouths will speak, and Higher Learning will record. Higher learning newspaper is published weekly by Blackback Storm Media and Publishers. It is registered with the Ministry of Home Affairs under the National Archives of Zambia.
