Chronicle Editor
Professor Amon Murwira, Special Correspondent
Zimbabwe aspires to be a middle income economy a national vision as pronounced on behalf of the nation by His Excellency, President, Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Becoming an upper middle income economy has therefore become Zimbabwe’s national strategic intent.
To achieve this national strategic intent, a national capability to modernise and industrialise the nation through an education system that is designed to produce quality goods and services is important.
It is therefore important to note that a national strategic intent can be delivered using a national capability that in turn is delivered using an appropriate education design that is deliberately primed to cause industrialisation and modernisation.
As a Government, we are guided by the fact that the purpose of any meaningful education system is to improve the quality of life for all citizens.
In essence, it means an education system has to lead to production. To this end, any education that does not produce goods and services is not useful at all.
Thus, as a nation, capability of higher and tertiary education to cause the production of goods and services provision is now the mission critical.
Following our conscious realisation that a nation cannot develop faster than the development of its higher and tertiary education system, it has become natural for Zimbabwe to examine the design of our higher and tertiary education system. This is with the intention of finding out the extent to which it is fit for the purpose of industrialising and modernising Zimbabwe, specifically, the extent to which our education can cause a national capability to fulfil our national strategic intent of becoming an upper middle income economy and more.
Design of systems is everything in this world and examination of designs is paramount for national survival, national continuity and national prosperity.
As we move our nation forward, we must not forget that we lived in a colonial design for close to 100 years.
The colonial design was never meant for our benefit. So, it has become important to ask whether and to what extent the inherited colonial education system design would fulfil our national strategic intent.
In the Second Republic, it has become imperative for us to look at the design of our higher and tertiary education system to find out to what extent it is fit for the purpose of producing goods and services for purposes of national industrialisation and modernisation.
To this end, we conducted the national critical skills audit from December 2017 to April 2018. The results showed that although through significant efforts from 1980 to 2017 we managed to achieve the national literacy rate is 94 percent up from single digit levels during the colonial era, the national skills levels remain low at 38 percent.
However, we are cognisant of the fact that the ability to cause production of goods and services, which are critical ingredients in the modernisation and industrialisation agenda can only happen when there is both knowledge and skill.
To this end, an education design that imparts knowledge and skills development has become the main focus of the Second Republic.
The inherited colonial education design in Zimbabwe is not fit for the production of goods and services although it is generally known that education must directly cause the development of industries.
Specifically, there has been a general disconnect between knowledge gained in the education system and the local environment, thus the education system resulted in churning out graduates that are work ready for other systems and not the local environment.
A simple design analysis shows us that our inherited higher and tertiary education system design only focused on three missions, which are; teaching, research and community outreach — we codenamed this Education 3.0.
From the Education 3.0 design, it becomes obvious that it produces no prospects for producing any goods and services. It is important to note that, being a colonial design, it worked perfect for its purpose, which was, to produce a worker who would work in a colonial industry, not an industrialist, not a producer!
It is the therefore a considered view of the Second Republic that the Education 3.0 model is not fit for an Independent state such as Zimbabwe whose intention is to become modernised and industrialised.
In the Second Republic, as Zimbabwe turns 40, we have now designed a five mission education model of teaching, research, community outreach, innovation and industrialisation can lead us to the production of goods and services.
To this end we codenamed our model Education 5.0.
Based on this five-mission model, our mission critical for the production of goods and services through higher and tertiary education can be met.
Further analysis of our education system showed that it was removed from the environment it was supposed to transform. We then conceptualised the heritage based philosophy as an underpinning philosophy for our Education 5.0.
We know that countries develop based on the application of knowledge and skill on their heritage-animals, plants, water and minerals. Thus, we have a firm conviction that our Education 5.0 design can only be driven effectively by a heritage philosophy.
Heritage based Education 5.0 is a complete transformation of the education mission. It directs universities and tertiary institutions to be focused on programmes that lead to goods and services.
In other words, all degree, certificate and diploma programmes in our institutions shall have minimum bodies of knowledge and skill that lead to the production of goods and services. We have so far built five innovation hubs at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ), National University of Science and Technology (Nust), Harare Institute of Technology (HIT), Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT) and Midlands State University (MSU).
The Second Republic is also in the process of building additional innovation hubs, at Bindura University Science Education (BUSE) and Zimbabwe National Defence University, among others.
There is also construction of industrial parks at Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT) farm as well as at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) farm and we are in the process of modernising the industrial park at Midlands State University (MSU).
It is important to note that as a result of this Higher and Tertiary Education design shift (Education 3.0 to Education 5.0) in the Second Republic, more than 60 patents have been filed from the universities within a matter of months.
University of Zimbabwe has submitted at least 50 of these.
CUT has successfully launched an Artificial Insemination Programme with potential revenue of US$140 million.
HIT has successfully launched several IT based solutions, including the BUS tracking system and Tap Card system.
In conclusion, we now know that Education 3.0 cannot cause modernisation and industrialisation. In fact, we cannot expect to have modernisation and industrialisation from a wrong education design.
Education 3.0 was never meant for industrialisation in the first place. In the Second Republic, we realised that our problem of limited industrialisation, has been a design problem, where our education systems were not designed to deliver the desired output.
A nation normally fails to grow economically because it is participating in systems it was never involved in designing. As a nation, we participated in the Education 3.0 design and the results are there for everyone to see — no industrialisation and therefore no jobs.
However, with Heritage Based Education 5.0, which is our own design, Zimbabwe shall modernise and industrialise.
All in all, Heritage Based Education 5.0 is our own design to deliver a modernised and industrialised nation by 2030.
– Professor Amon Murwira is Zimbabwe`s Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science, Innovation and Technology Development.
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