Blended learning is widely promoted as a means of widening access to higher education, yet its implementation in resource-constrained settings is shaped by infrastructural, financial and digital-literacy conditions that can undermine equitable participation. This study examined the implementation of an undergraduate blended learning programme in a health-related science discipline at a Zambian university from the perspective of its coordinator. Using a reflective practitioner case study design informed by analytic autoethnography, we analysed 100 of the 150 entries in the coordinator’s e-portfolio (2024-2025), which combined the coordinator’s own reflections with paraphrased feedback from 50 out of 120 learners and three staff members. Gibbs’ reflective cycle was used as a scaffold for re-reading each entry, and reflexive thematic analysis, sensitised by the teaching, social and cognitive presences of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, was used to develop themes. Eight themes were constructed. Flexible scheduling, flipped learning supported by offline modules, peer engagement and open educational resources were documented as enabling participation, whereas unreliable connectivity and electricity supply, fee-related loss of access to the learning management system, insufficient digital induction and competing work and caregiving demands constrained it. The most distinctive insight concerns offline modules, which functioned as a resilience layer that allowed learner preparation and teaching presence to persist when connectivity and power failed. Because the account comes from a single programme evaluated by an insider and includes no outcome data, the findings are offered as context-bound propositions rather than as evidence of effects. They suggest that, in comparable settings, blended designs may need to plan for infrastructural failure, provide structured digital onboarding and align fee policies with continued access to learning materials.