Already moving: physical literacy and the framing of physical activity for noncommunicable disease prevention in Zambia

Physical literacy is increasingly promoted as part of the global response to physical inactivity and noncommunicable disease. This conceptual paper examines what happens when the concept is applied in Zambia, where much adult movement is accumulated through work, transport, and household labour rather than leisure. Physical literacy can have a place, but only if carefully framed and not conflated with the sports-based physical education through which it has so far travelled. In its dominant policy form, it assumes a population that has lost ordinary movement. Zambia’s STEPS survey complicates that: most moderate-to-vigorous activity occurs at work and in transport. Distinguishing between instrumental and constitutive movements, the paper offers six cautions for policy together with policy implications and directions for future research, and argues that Zambia should begin with the movement already present and keep the activity agenda proportionate within a wider NCD response.