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Agriculture Reporter
Universities should provide solutions to challenges being faced and meet human needs through industry, mining, agriculture and manufacturing sector, Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development Minister, Professor Amon Murwira has said.
He said this while making a presentation at the Marondera University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology (MUAST)’s strategic planning workshop at the Management Training Bureau in Msasa yesterday.
Prof Murwira said while the national literacy rate was 94 percent, the national skills levels was 38 percent.
“Production of goods can only happen when there is knowledge and skill,” he said. “Knowledge and skills development has, therefore, become one of our main focus as a nation.
“We now have a model that enables us to move from one idea to product, by adding innovation and industrialisation to the traditional tripartite mission of teaching, research and community outreach.”
Prof Murwira said manpower planning and development system had for years been removed from the environment it was supposed to transform while concentrating on feeding other economic systems.
“We, therefore, adopted the heritage based philosophy to anchor education,” he said. “This means we must have advanced knowledge from anywhere in the world, but apply it to our environment for producing a competitive industry.
“Agriculture in most parts of Africa has not been heritage based and is thus dominated by crops that are not ecologically suited to Africa, explaining most food deficit problems we have. When education is removed from the environment, it is supposed to transform, it leads to no development.”
MUAST has been challenged not to focus on theory, but also practical education so that its products will not be job-seekers, but entrepreneurs.
When doing agro-ecology, said Prof Murwira, it should not just be theory, but practical as well.
“If education is done in the correct way, we will not have job-seekers,” said Prof Murwira.
“A country importing food cannot be said to having no jobs. An opportunity occurs when there is a challenge.
“We should have mental sovereignty. The level of national development is measured by the extent at which human needs are met. Our children have been told they are not good enough and our educational syllabus should answer the need of the people.”
MUAST vice chancellor, Prof Justice Nyamangara, said their university was the only Agricultural Science and Technology University in Zimbabwe as others only have faculties of agriculture.
He said the university sits on the nexus of two sectors of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development and that of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement.
“Currently, the university is operating from three sites, Dosmery Farm where the faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Technology is based, CSC Marondera Complex where the Administration, Faculty of Earth and Environmental Science and directorate for innovation technology transfer are based and at the United Methodist Church in Ruzawi Park where the faculty of Agribusiness and Entrepreneurship is based,” said Prof Nyamangara.
“The university will embark on innovation and industrialisation focusing on commercial farming, and agro processing and value addition.”
The workshop was attended by ministry officials and university staff.
Online Reporter