Engineer Tapuwa Justice Mashangwa
For many Zimbabwean students pursuing degrees and diplomas in agriculture, agronomy, agricultural engineering, animal science, horticulture, agricultural economics, agribusiness, food science and related disciplines, industrial attachment is one of the most important stages of their education.
It is the point at which classroom knowledge is expected to meet the realities of commercial production, farm management, processing, marketing, technology and agricultural finance.
Yet, for an increasing number of students, obtaining a suitable attachment placement has become a significant challenge. The problem is not simply a shortage of farms. The deeper issue is the shortage of well-structured, adequately supervised and technically sophisticated attachment opportunities that can give students meaningful exposure to modern agriculture.
Research on Zimbabwe’s agricultural attachment system has documented difficulties in securing placements, limitations in the technology available at some host farms, inadequate mentorship and situations where students felt they were being used primarily as cheap labour. More recent research on industrial attachment in Zimbabwe has similarly identified challenges involving financing, timing, assessment, institutional coordination and relationships between students, tertiary institutions and host organisations.
At the same time, Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector is changing. Agriculture is increasingly connected to agro-processing, digital technology, climate-smart agriculture, logistics, export markets, financial services, research, data analytics and regional trade. This means that students should not restrict their attachment search to traditional farms.
The attachment requirement creates a situation in which thousands of students may be looking for practical placements during broadly similar periods. Universities and colleges often have limited capacity to individually secure placements for every student, leaving students to approach companies, farms, government departments, NGOs and other organisations themselves.
For students from agricultural programmes, this creates a particularly difficult situation.
A student may send dozens of application letters to commercial farms, seed companies, agrochemical companies, banks, NGOs and agribusinesses without receiving a response. Others may eventually obtain a placement but discover that the organisation does not have a structured training programme.
This is important because getting an attachment is not necessarily the same as getting a good attachment.
A 2013 study, ‘Farm attachment as a training methodology for Zimbabwe agricultural colleges’ students, post land reform : challenges encountered’ by Xavier Edziwa and Renias Chivheya specifically examining Zimbabwean agricultural college students found that students experienced difficulty securing attachment places and that the technological level of some farms providing placements was limited. The study also reported concerns about inadequate mentorship, gender-related preferences among some mentors and students feeling that they were being used as cheap labour. Despite these studies having been done in 2013, the status quo presented has not changed much.
A broader Zimbabwean student attachment survey found that most respondents had secured attachment related to their degree programmes, although remuneration and the quality of the experience remained issues.
Therefore, the central question should not merely be, “Where can I get attachment?”. It should be, “Where can I obtain attachment that substantially improves my technical competence, employability and understanding of the agricultural value chain?”
The major challenges facing agricultural attachment students are: limited availability of suitable placement organisations; students often seek “any farm” instead of the right farm; financial constraints; accommodation and rural infrastructure; inadequate mentorship; students being used as cheap labour and technology gaps.
Zimbabwe has many agricultural businesses, but not all of them have the capacity to host students. A small farm may be able to accommodate one agricultural student but may not have enough supervisors, machinery, accommodation or activities to provide a comprehensive training experience.
Large commercial farms may have better infrastructure but limited attachment spaces. Agribusiness companies may receive applications from students across several universities simultaneously. The result is competition for relatively few high-quality positions.
Students sometimes approach attachment as a compulsory academic requirement rather than a career-development opportunity. An agriculture student interested in precision agriculture, for example, could gain considerably more from a technologically advanced horticulture enterprise using irrigation automation, GIS, drones, sensors and farm-management software than from an operation where most activities remain manual.
Similarly, a student interested in agribusiness may learn more from a company involved in procurement, contract farming, agricultural finance, export logistics and marketing than from spending an entire year performing routine farm labour. The quality and relevance of exposure therefore matter enormously.
Attachment can impose significant financial costs on students. These may include transport, accommodation, food, protective clothing, work boots, field equipment, communication costs, relocation expenses and university attachment-related expenses. This can make placements outside the student’s home town difficult. Agricultural attachment is particularly affected because many high-quality farms are located in rural areas.
The student may therefore find themselves in a paradox: the best practical opportunities may be geographically distant from the student, while the most accessible opportunities may provide limited exposure.
Addressing these limitations will take time and to regain our position as the agricultural breadbasket of Africa we will have to resolve each challenge.
The writer is Eng. Tapuwa Justice Mashangwa, GCEO Emerald Investments, CEO DataFarm, CEO Emerald Agribusiness and CEO TranslateZW. He can be contacted on +263771641714 and email: [email protected] or [email protected].
