Was one of the projects of the independence movement and opened its doors to the first cohort of less than 300 students in March 1966. Since then student enrolment has grown to over 7,000 full-time undergraduates plus about 3,000 studying by distance education. Graduate student enrollment is now growing rapidly, with about 400 students in over fifty Masters degree programmes, and a handful of doctoral students. The University has nine schools and three Directorates. The largest of these is the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, with more than 2,000 enrolled students, 70 academic staff in post, and ten Departments. One of these is the Psychology Department, with thirteen academic staff currently in post. In addition, two recent graduates of UNZA currently hold Staff Development Fellowships and are enrolled in the Department's graduate programme in Clinical Neuropsychology.

In addition to eight developmentally oriented scholars on the current staff of the Psychology Department, UNZA has four more based in the School of Education's Department of Educational Psychology, Sociology and Special Education, and two in the School of Medicine's Department of Pediatrics and Child Health. These three Departments have joined together to form the Local Organising Committee for the ISSBD international congress in 2010.

The LOC has been assisted in the development of the congress programme by two international panels of experts:

The International Scientific Programme Committee (ISPC) & The African Research Advisory Panel (ARAP)

The teaching of psychology at the University of Zambia started with the Human Development Research Unit (HDRU) at the Institute for Social Research (now the Institute for Economic and Social Research), shortly after the Institute was incorporated within the University at its inception in 1965. The University's tradition of research on behavioural development can be traced back to that period. Currently undergraduate courses in various aspects of psychology are offered in three different Schools of the University: Education, Humanities & Social Sciences, and Medicine. A new initiative, funded by NOMA in 2009, brought the Psychology Department and the School of Medicine into a new area of cooperation in offering a MSc degree in Clinical Neuropsychology, building much needed local expertise to address the neuropsychological challenges of HIV infection.The School of Education offers a MEd degree in Educational Psychology, and,since 2007, the Department of Psychology has revived its MA degree programme in Child and Adolescent Psychology. The first cohort of 3 received their degrees in 2009, and there are currently 17 more students enrolled at various stages of the programme.

The University has hosted numerous international workshops and conferences in the past. In 1996, Prof Serpell and Ms Mwape of the UNZA Psychology Department served as Chair and Secretary of the local organising committee for an African Regional Workshop sponsored by the ISSBD which included scholars from 11 African countries, Finland, Germany and the USA. The Department is thus already fully conversant with the aims and objectives of the ISSBD, and has gladly assumed responsibility for hosting the 2010 international congress in accordance with the Guidelines published by the Society. More recently, in 2005, as the then Vice-Chancellor of the University, Prof Serpell organised a consultative meeting in Lusaka for Vice-Chancellors of the 47 universities of the 13-nation SADC sub-region, co-sponsored by the World Bank and the Open Society Institute of Southern Africa, to develop the framework for an organisation that was formally launched in 2006 as the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA). In 2006, the UNZA Directorate of Research and Graduate Studies hosted an international conference on interdisciplinary research that attracted scientific presentations by more than 40 scholars from several African countries and Belgium. And in May 2010, UNZA is playing a key role in hosting thee-Learning Africa Conference - Lusaka from 26th-28th May 2010.