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Herald Reporter
President Mnangagwa has made a major Cabinet reshuffle, swapping Foreign Minister Ambassador Fredrick Shava and Higher Education Minister Professor Amon Murwira with immediate effect.
The reshuffle means Ambassador Shava, formerly the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, will now be Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development while Prof Murwira will take on the role of Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Dr Martin Rushwaya, announced the reassignments in a statement yesterday.
The reassignments were made in terms of Section 104 Subsection (1) of the Constitution of Zimbabwe.
“The reassignments are with immediate effect,” said the Chief Secretary.
Ambassador Shava is a long-serving member of the Zimbabwean Government having started his service to the nation in the early independence years.
He was first appointed into Cabinet as Minister of Labour, Manpower Planning and Development in 1981 and served in that portifolio until 1986 before later serving as Minister of State for Political Affairs from 1987.
After a period of deployment to the ruling party Zanu PF headquarters as Director of Administration, Ambassador Shava bounced back into Government service as Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to China from 2007 to 2014 at a time Harare had adopted the Look East Policy after some Western powers had imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe.
After his tour of duty in Beijing, Ambassador Shava served as Zimbabwe’s Representative to the United Nations in New York, another key and strategic diplomatic post.
During his tenure at the United Nations, he was elected as the President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council in 2016.
Ambassador Shava was appointed Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister in 2021, replacing the late national hero Lieutenant General (Retired) Sibusiso Moyo following his death.
Taking over from the late Lt Gen (Retired) Moyo, Ambassador Shava has been complementing President Mnangagwa to drive Zimbabwe’s economic diplomacy under the Second Republic’s engangement and re-engangement drive. Under the policy, Zimbabwe has positioned itself as a friend to all and an enemy to none in multilateral affairs and international diplomacy.
An academic, Prof Murwira was first appointed into Cabinet in 2017 when President Mnangagwa named him as Higher and Tertiary Education Minister and the President reappointed him following the 2018 and 2023 elections.
His career path has taken him through teaching and working as an ecologist in the Ministry of Environment before Government sent him to Canada to study satellites.
Later, the University of Zimbabwe asked him to study Satellite Remote Sensing and Information Geographical Sciences at Master’s level in The Netherlands on a scholarship.
He graduated with a distinction in 2000 and completed his PhD in 2003, and the following year he was back in Zimbabwe lecturing at the UZ.
Prof Murwira has been instrumental in championing President Mnangagwa’s Vision to revamp the country’s tertiary education under Education 5.0.
During his tenure at Higher and Tertiary Education, Prof Murwira oversaw the realisation of President Mnangagwa’s vision to introduce innovation hubs and industrial parks at all State universities to allow innovation to thrive at institutions of higher learning.
The innovation hubs and industrial parks have seen a number of landmark innovations coming out of the universities as Zimbabwe strives to produce graduates who are relevant to the market and industry and who can also create employment through their inventions.
Online Reporter