In Zambia, she became a supporter of the African nationalist movement. Then, in 1975, Chung joined the Zimbabwean liberation struggle as a member of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU).

 "I grew up understanding politics from my grandfather," she says. "When I went to university, I think I became more politicized."

 As a senior official in the organization, Chung was responsible for implementing ZANU's teacher training and curriculum development in refugee camps before the country's independence. Around 300 teachers were trained to run curricula for 9,000 students at all educational levels, from preschool to university.

 After Zimbabwe's independence, Chung was appointed Deputy Minister of Administration for the new country's Education Ministry. In 1988, President Robert Mugabe promoted her to minister of education.

 During her tenure at the Ministry of Education, Chung developed and implemented a nationwide primary and secondary education program. Its aim was obvious. Before independence, just one third of black children attended primary school, and only 4 percent of black children attended any sort of secondary school. There were only 300 black university students in the entire nation. Thanks to the ministry's efforts, it managed to get primary education for everyone within three years and secondary education for 65 percent, and the number of university students increased to 10,000.

 "It's one of the foundations for development," says Chung. "Without education you cannot go very far." 

Educating women

Although she had once planned to become a journalist, a career in education seemed to be Chung's destiny. When she visited China for the first time in 1973, she was surprised to learn many family members – on both her mother and father's sides – were teachers. "So," Chung grins, "maybe it's genetic."

 In her family's village, there were many elderly women who had married in 1930s whose husbands had left and never come back. Surrounded by these women, Chung was asked about whereabouts of their husbands.

 "These women had lost their husbands," she says. "The men dispersed all over the world from the village."

 Chung's grandmother could have been one of these women. Chung's grandfather once returned to China in the 1930s to marry a girl, a marriage that had been arranged by his family. But he ultimately left her and their child for Africa. When their child was 12 years old, Chung's grandmother decided to stop waiting. She traveled to Rhodesia to find her husband.

 "I think she's unusual," says Chung of her grandmother. Her grandmother's bravery and wisdom stood as an example of how women could be masters of their own destinies, and guided Chung through her own life's journey.

 In Zimbabwe, Chung began researching the country's first group of Chinese immigrants. Her findings showed that nearly most of this group was keen to educate boys, but not girls. And in China, Chung saw her cousin – a teacher himself – refuse to send his daughters to school. Chung began to feel even more passionate about education for women.

 She became a founding member of the Forum for African Women Educationalists, which focused on strengthening education for girls and women in Africa. She also helped to found the Association for Strengthening Higher Education for Women in Africa.

 "After 20 years since independence in Zimbabwe, I realized the status of women's education is backward," explains Chung, who believes this situation is in urgent need of fixing. "In Africa, as a whole, only 5 percent of women go to university," she says. "I think it's necessary to democratize secondary education for women."

 In 2002, Chung founded the Zimbabwe-based Women's University in Africa.

 "I think a women's university can look at the issues that are important to women," says Chung. "For example, 70 percent of women in Zimbabwe work in agriculture, but very few are trained as agricultural specialists."

 Chung resigned from the Ministry of Education after a disagreement with the government, but she continues to work to replicate her Zimbabwean education platform in developing countries around the world as UNICEF's Chief of the Education Cluster in New York. In 1998 she returned to Africa and founded UNESCO's International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa based in Ethiopia.

 In the Zimbabwean parliamentary election of 2008, Fay King Chung returned to the political arena and stood as an independent candidate. For Chung, no matter the job, education remains her lifelong career.