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Precious Manomano
Herald Reporter
THE Government has launched the Zimbabwe Online Agricultural College (ZOAC) with the aim of addressing capacity gaps in farming communities, especially beneficiaries of the Land Reform Programmes A1 and A2 models and all settlement models.
ZOAC will be a virtual college that uses internet based technologies to ensure learning from anywhere, including homes and farms.
It is the first of its kind Zimbabwe as the country moves towards the digitalisation of competence based agricultural education.
Knowledge and skills development is the bedrock of the current agricultural transformation and rural development thrust that is expected to turn Zimbabweans into an upper middle income economy by 2030.
Speaking during the launch of ZOAC, Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Permanent Secretary Dr John Basera said farmers should capitalise on this new development to acquire new skills and in turn, capacitate their workers.
He said the agriculture sector offered huge opportunities to transform livelihoods and appropriate skills development, adding that the appropriate skills development would enable the country to achieve and maintain food self-sufficiency and security.
“This will enable the country to achieve economic development, rural development, generation of exports and employment creation. Each agricultural value chain requires a unique set of skills and competencies.
“The agrarian and land reform ballooned the demand for new skills and knowledge sets to service about 21 000 A2 and 360 000A1 farmers.
“Over 90 percent of these farm beneficiaries are non-agriculturalists but aspiring to be fully fledged farmers. This dovetails with the thrust under the agricultural information management system where the ministry can also interact academically with its stakeholders, imparting essential skills and tracking the impact of the training,” he said.
Dr Basera said measures would be taken to ensure that the subject matter was well understood and farming practices were done correctly.
Department of Agricultural Education director Dr Jotamu Dondofema said to close the skills gap in farming, it was necessary to improve farmers’ access to agricultural education through Competence Based Education Training (CBET) programmes that were easily accessible to farmers.
“In pursuit of Zimbabwe’s Vision 2030 of attaining a prosperous and empowered middle income society as enunciated by President Mnangagwa, the ministry is launching an intervention in the form of Zimbabwe Online Agricultural College to accelerate the implementation of Agricultural Education for Development 5.0 and broaden farmers to good agronomic practises in Zimbabwe,” he said.
Online learning offers the flexibility that may be desired by people wishing to upgrade their skills or learn the tools of trade to increase production.
An official who spoke on behalf of ZARNet chief executive, Engineer Washington Musungwa, said the platform would drive economic growth using digital platforms.
“Government enunciated policies to direct the nation towards vision 2030 which will be realised through the transitional stabilisation programme.
“We are witnessing today, technology as the new frontier driving change and transformation within economies and communities.
“This innovation has definitely transformed the traditional learning delivery practice and created the new ones that will drive economic growth and provide platforms for ZOAC,” he said.
Farmers welcomed the initiative, saying it would go a long way in improving the agricultural industry.
Mrs Thania Mangozho of Bindura said many farmers will benefit from the skills thereby improving productivity levels.
“We have a passion for farming, so we are grateful for this initiative which is going to boost our productivity levels and profits. We are sure that this platform will be imparting knowledge to us, thereby gaining more skills which will result in higher productivity levels. We do not have enough time to attend lessons physically so this is the best platform for us who are always busy,” she said.
Another farmer Mr Peter Mapfumo who was present at the launch indicated that this is a major milestone which has so far been achieved in the agricultural sector, adding that farming is a business which needs requisite skills, hence the platform will be suitable for improving the growth of the sector.
“We are grateful for the Government’s support because skills are important as they will determine the end results of the products. We are proud of this initiative because we are going to learn a lot,” he said.
To support the programme, Ministry of Information Communication and Technology (ICT) through POTRAZ donated 30 laptops and 134 tablets.
Agriculture is a key component of National Development Strategy One (NDS1) and the Government was leaving no stone unturned in its quest for national food security and ensuring that the vast number of small-scale farming families move from subsistence agriculture to becoming proper commercial farmers growing and selling surpluses of food and cash crops so that they enter the formal economy and become middle-income with the rest of the country.
Online Reporter