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THE new Binga Polytechnic opened its doors a couple of weeks ago at the start of the 2022-2023 academic year in borrowed buildings with an initial 45 students.
But it is now there, less than a year after President Mnangagwa promised the people of that near forgotten corner of Zimbabwe that he means what he says that no place and no person should be left behind.
The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development has already included the polytechnic on its budget, with the first $50 million in start-up costs paid, and the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development has a building programme.
In fact, the Ministry is now adopting and developing the concept that a lot of its building needs can be done in the relevant practical courses offered by many of its colleges, giving a lot more building for each dollar it gouges out of Treasury as it pushes ahead to catch up on requirements and commitments.
The idea makes sense, instead of building walls with mud instead of cement so they can be knocked down easily for the next class, or putting together plumbing with paper glue so the bits can be pulled apart and dismantled for the next class.
And students can have a sense of achievement on graduation day when they walk past the bit they built. And there is plenty to build over the years.
And the other sensible and practical policy of the Ministry is to use an established polytechnic, in the case of Binga this is Bulawayo, to help the newcomer through the early years. This will become increasingly important for one critical reason.
In one sense the new Binga Polytechnic is something new, putting in a decent training college in a place where there was nothing.
Already students are pointing out that they now have somewhere they can go for higher education in practical subjects right where they live, without having to travel a few hundred kilometres or find extra money for accommodation.
That seems to imply that restricting this sort of education to the major cities and the largest towns was not the right answer.
People can these days, in most places, find primary and secondary schools reasonably close to where they live, so why not the next stages.
Binga could even become a model for other centres, and it is probably about time that this particular district can take the lead in something, as well as catch up itself.
So in another sense Binga should not be particularly special, just the sort of thing that can start happening in a lot of other places.
All polytechnics started small. The small odd building between the Simon Muzenda Street carpark and the bus terminus in Harare used to be Harare Polytechnic, all of it.
Then the polytechnic found a much better and far larger site on the major Government education reserve on the other side of the city centre and moved. But that small building is where it started.
We also need more colleges because the other point that comes across when we talk to that pioneering intake of students is the desire to learn something useful, become certified and then start earning a decent living, quite probably in the centre or place where they live and come from.
One young lady taking up plumbing, for example, reckons that where she lives there is a mine and no doubt growing businesses and housing, and so a lot of work for a competent and trained plumber. She is right.
We need to remember that polytechnics are not operating in a vacuum. They are there to produce that large number of trained technical people who are going to be required in ever increasing numbers.
We have a Government now pushing rural development hard, basically ensuring that small-scale farmers can earn a decent living and converting subsistence farmers into commercial farmers.
There are also the water schemes, the boreholes being drilled, the rural electrification that President Mnangagwa was talking about at the weekend and the mechanisation that is being developed.
But one point that then comes up is who is going to be maintaining all of this, who are farmers with growing incomes going to hire to fix something that goes wrong?
When you look at the fairly short-term future, you suddenly see the need for electricians, for tractor mechanics, for builders and let us not forget our young plumbing student.
At the same time we are creating new major industries in or near small towns, and while the investors or the Government want to hire local, they also need skills. So again there is growing demand for skilled people almost everywhere.
The potential technicians are there. One curious point that arose in Binga was that people with 5 or even 8 O’Levels said they were glad to get a place, and that apparently was something they had been having problems with.
There was a time, and if you look at the minimum secondary education requirements for a vast swathe of courses this still applies, someone with five O’Levels, or even five passes at a slightly lower level examination, was eagerly accepted for many types of training.
The growth of secondary education has seen far more people having these “trainable” qualifications, without the training places being there and so ever higher entry qualifications are needed in practice, if not in theory.
That also needs to end. And a rapid expansion in the training polytechnics is the obvious answer. We already need more skilled people, and we are going to need a lot more quite soon.
We have young people with adequate secondary education that allows them to benefit from this training. We just need the colleges to put the requirements and the youngsters together.
People can also advance. The Higher Education Ministry already has certificate and higher national diploma courses, and the second stage follows from the first.
But you can go back several years later after being certified to start the diploma.
At one stage engineering faculties at universities offered special shortened courses for those who had done well in the diploma courses, and again you could do this some years later.
So Binga Polytechnic is not just a previously forgotten district starting to get its due, or the President fulfilling his promises. It also shows what is needed, and what can be done to do something about fulfilling those needs.
Online Reporter