HIT to host Technovation Expo 2024

Sifelani Tsiko
The Harare Institute of Technology (HIT) will this week host Technovation Expo 2024 to showcase cutting–edge research and innovation outputs.
This Technovation Expo running under the theme: “Beyond Disruptive Innovation”, will be held from September 3 to 7, this year at the university’s campus in the capital.
The expo will feature public lectures, symposiums, a technopreneurship business plan competition, and exhibitions of start–ups, spin-offs and innovations.

HIT communications and international relations director, Tinashe Mutema said the expo will showcase cutting–edge research, development and innovation outputs, demonstrate how Education 5.0 has been assimilated across our curriculum, and provide a networking platform that promotes Science, Engineering, and Technology (SET).

In addition, he said the expo will explore and promote careers of the future and raise technopreneurial innovation literacy capabilities and awareness.
“The objective is to create a perfect opportunity to network, create synergies as well as create brand visibility,” he said.

At this event, HIT will showcase its technology developments, incubation, transfer, and commercialisation drive of its research outputs.

The Second Republic has been working round the clock to transform higher education in Zimbabwe to promote the production of qualified specialists and technicians, especially in the natural and applied sciences, engineering and technology, the medical and health sciences, and agriculture, among other critical sectors.

The Government largely sees tertiary education as a key driver of economic growth and poverty reduction as it plays a critical role in training a qualified and adaptable labour force, generating new knowledge through basic and applied research, and promoting the use of new and emerging technologies.

President Mnangagwa has spearheaded the adoption of the Heritage-based Education 5.0 model in the country’s institutions of higher learning to help promote research and innovation in the utilisation of local resources.
Education 5.0 is based on teaching, research, community service, innovation, and industrialisation and it seeks to move the nation forward toward an innovation-led and knowledge-driven economy.

This new model, which was adopted five years ago, aims to produce graduates who solve national problems instead of just being job seekers.