I returned from Zambia last week. It was five days. It felt longer, in the best possible way.
Asset Alliance Group became a Transaid corporate partner in 2024. The decision made sense to us, Transaid works in professional driver training and transport-based healthcare access, both areas that sit close to what we do as a business. But there is a version of a charity partnership that exists mostly on paper, in logos and line items, and I wanted to make sure our partnership wasn’t just that. So when the opportunity came to join a group of corporate supporters travelling to Zambia to see the work first-hand, I went, and I am so glad that I did.
We covered more than 1,200 kilometres by road during the visit, and the journey itself was incredibly revealing. Conditions that would cause major disruption in the UK are simply part of everyday life for professional drivers in Zambia. Along the route we passed overturned trucks and fuel tankers, stretches of tarmac giving way under pressure, and long sections where proper road surfaces disappear altogether, with children navigating traffic on their way to school. It’s an environment that demands constant focus, resilience and exceptional driving skill – the kind many in our industry would struggle to fully appreciate without seeing it first-hand. That context is important, because it underlines the real value of the work Transaid is doing at the Industrial Training Centre (ITC) in Lusaka.
The ITC is the only public commercial driver training centre in Zambia. Transaid has been partnering with them for over 20 years, delivering accredited training across HGV, PSV, forklift and motorcycle. We visited on the final day of the trip, and walking around the training ground, watching drivers working through their assessments, was a grounding experience. We also saw the truck that Asset Alliance Group donated to the centre. Seeing it there, marked up and in use, being put to work training the next generation of professional drivers, that is what partnership is supposed to look like.
Earlier in the trip we visited two rural communities in Central Province, where Transaid’s Emergency Transport Scheme has been running since 2010. The scheme provides bicycle ambulances to communities that have no other means of getting people to healthcare facilities, and trains volunteers from within those communities to operate them. More than 150 communities across Zambia have received one.
One of the most sobering moments was hearing stories from the communities. Stories from mothers about how their lives and the lives of their children have been saved by a bicycle ambulance. We heard from a mother whose daughter had been rushed to a clinic just days before our arrival, convulsing with suspected severe malaria. A volunteer rider got her there in time. Her daughter recovered. Without the bicycle ambulance, the outcome would very likely have been different.
What stays with me from those community visits is not just the stories, though the stories are remarkable. It is the commitment of the volunteers themselves. These are not paid professionals. They are community members who took on a responsibility because someone needed to, and they have kept showing up. In the first quarter of this year, 20 new ambulances were deployed across Zambia and 8 new riders trained. Behind each of those numbers is a specific place and a specific person willing to volunteer and make a difference to save lives.
For those of us who work in transport, it is easy to think of what we do in fairly transactional terms. Vehicles on the road, contracts signed, finance provided, fleets managed. This trip reminded me that transport is also one of the most fundamental elements that connects people to the resources they need. When it works, it is invisible and is easily taken for granted. When it is absent, the consequences are severe.
We became a Transaid partner because we believed it was the right thing to do. I came back from Zambia certain that it is, and thinking seriously about what more we can contribute and support.
If you would like to find out more about Transaid’s work, visit transaid.org.
