If you already know Zend Framework, namely things like,
- PhpRenderer
- ServiceManager
- ViewModel
it will help you, because you can choose those ZF components to go into your Expressive configuration and get a good head start, instead of taking baby steps learning what those are.
But, if you do not already know those, there is no reason to learn Zend Framework and I could argue that learning Zend Framework, in order to use Expressive, could be detrimental.
That is, because, Expressive, builds on new ideas of a microframework, rather than a pre-determined pipeline of Zend Framework, and those are quite different. If you are new to Expressive, I'd look into each concept separately and pick the components you wish to use. The concepts are
- Routing
- Dependency Injection Container
- Templating
You can also pick your own Error handling module. Also Expressive gives you standard compliancy, such as PSR-7 and PSR-15 when it becomes available.
It can be good to know Zend Framework (or similar framework) because working with those frameworks gives you an understanding of how those components are built, and how they connect. However, Expressive Skeleton gives you a pretty good idea and a good headstart on very good groundwork concepts and modern web development (routing, templates, error handling, DI container). Newer concepts in Expressive are Middlewares and piping them together. Those were not present in Zend Framework at first, but now they made it in there as well.