GEMS plans Zanzibar school launch to kickstart global growth

If you wanted to conjure up an image of a far-flung exotic location, you couldn’t do much better than Zanzibar.

And the island, 25 miles off the coast of Tanzania in East Africa, is very much on the international schools map now, after GEMS Education’s advisory arm, GEMS School Management (GSM), announced a plan to open a British curriculum school in its historic Stone Town region by 2028.

The school will be open to pupils aged 4 to 18, and GSM expects to launch with 730 students before scaling up to 1,110 as more year groups are added.

The school is being created in partnership with Infinity Developments, a real estate group overseeing several major residential and hospitality projects across East Africa.

The two organisations said they are also exploring the possibility of future school openings in other parts of East Africa, including Rwanda, Malawi and mainland Tanzania.

GEMS moves into a new market

The plan is certainly a far cry from the usual international school openings in established markets across the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous region of the United Republic of Tanzania. GSM and Infinity Developments’ statement about their plan points to a report from the Tanzania Investment and Consultant Group that says the nation’s middle class is projected to grow from about 3.7 million in 2020 to over 15 million by 2030.

Meanwhile, World Bank data shows Tanzania’s GDP as growing by more than 4 per cent since 2021, again offering justification for why the schools group would be keen to open in the country.

Robert Tarn, CEO of GSM, says it is this economic growth, underpinned by tourism, that is driving more professional staff to the island and therefore creating the need for an international school.

“There are a significant number of developments up that coastline, particularly in the tourist industry, that is leading to a growing population of middle and upper management personnel who are coming there and have families,” he tells Tes.

The issue is that currently there are limited school spaces for the children on the island - with many having to attend boarding schools in other countries if they want to access a Western curricula education.

Tarn says GSM’s planned school can meet this demand. “We’re working with a [property] developer who sees the advantage of positioning a GEMS-branded British international school on the same development to enhance the profile and act as an attraction,” he adds.

An artist’s illustration of the planned GEMS school in Zanzibar

This does not mean the school will be filled solely with expat children, though, with the local population also expected to take up places.

“Together with the existing population, which has a growing school-aged population, and a growing demand for private education among the local population, it’s a good opportunity for us,” Tarn says.

It should be noted that there is already an international school on the island, the International School of Zanzibar, which caters for around 200 students - a figure that perhaps underlines why another school might be needed.

For Tony Atkinson, school development manager at ISC Research, the move by GEMS on to the island is a “very interesting” one, and he tells Tes it appears to be part of a long-term strategy by the group to grow in new markets ahead of competition.

“East Africa is still relatively early in its international school development cycle compared to the Gulf Cooperation Council or many Asian markets,” he says.

“That suggests this may be less about short-term scale and more about long-term positioning in emerging growth corridors.”

He notes, too, that the plan also fits the trend of large groups moving into new markets to “reduce overreliance on a single core geography over time as markets mature and competition intensifies”.

For GEMS, which is predominantly based in the United Arab Emirates and will have seen the potential disruption to its business model from the impact of the war in the Middle East, that certainly makes sense.

The island of Zanzibar

However, Fergus Kell, a research fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham House, tells Tes that while East Africa is certainly “a locus of economic growth on the African continent”, there are risks with the region.

For one, he says, the likely cost of fees for such a school would be “unattainable in the short term” for most of the nation’s emerging domestic middle class, as although there has been “strong GDP growth” in the country, this is “competing with rapid population growth”, which means “per capita income growth is far more subdued”

As such, the planned school would likely be more attractive to “wealthier foreign nationals in the country”, as Tarn notes - though this comes with the risk of that cohort of families leaving if issues arise.

And that can certainly happen, with Kell citing issues such as political unrest in 2025, when hundreds of people were killed in response to election results, and the risk of economic shocks to commodities, “given Tanzania’s reliance on the gold sector”.

More schools to be unveiled soon

However, Tarn makes it clear that East Africa is not the only region in GSM’s sights, with more new schools set to be announced in the coming months.

“Within our first 10 months of operation, we’re likely to be contracted for 10 GEMS-branded schools in nine different countries,” he reveals.

It’s a figure that shows GSM has been working hard since its launch - it has also announced a plan for a school in Cyprus - with Tarn saying its focus away from the owner-operator model gives it the chance to operate flexibly.

“Because we work with investors and property developers, we can scale up really quickly because we’re not the investor. We’re bringing the educational expertise, we employ the staff, design the school and then run it for them,” he explains.

“We are ambitious in where we’ll work - we’re not saying no to anything. We do our feasibility studies and if the study suggests there’s a market for a school and we can find the right model to make that work for our client, then we’ll do it.”

It’s a strategy that, based on GSM’s first-year growth, Tarn says could mean it operating 50 schools within five years - a rate of growth he says is achievable because of the capacity within the wider GEMS organisation

“We have this huge capacity in the GEMS back office that allows us to design multiple schools at the same time, staff multiple schools at the same time, and we do all different major curricula, at all different fee points,” he says.

“So if we get an enquiry to set up and manage a premium British curriculum school in a certain country, we can say yes, and then if I get a phone call the week after from a different country saying, ‘Could you set up an affordable Indian curriculum school?’, we can do that as well.”

It’s a bullish view and one that will likely have the other major global school groups paying attention amid the ongoing battle for market growth in regions across the world.

“It’s exciting times,” says Tarn.