Prosper Ndlovu recently in WINDHOEK, Namibia
MIDLANDS State University (MSU) is emerging as a front-runner among Zimbabwean higher learning institutions in turning Education 5.0 into a commercial reality, with the university moving beyond traditional teaching and research to produce goods, build businesses, enter export markets and create employment.
The university’s growing commercial drive is positioning it as a potential model for how Zimbabwean universities can contribute directly to production, industrialisation and the attainment of Vision 2030.
Speaking during a recent Zimbabwean outward trade mission to Namibia organised by ZimTrade, Mr Joseph Matarutse, Director of the MSU Agro-Business Unit, said the university had deliberately diversified its operations to reduce dependence on student fees and establish sustainable sources of income.
“We thought as a university, we must generate some third streams of income. We should not rely only on fees paid by students, but we should generate some third stream income,” he said.
That strategy has seen MSU develop a diverse portfolio of commercial enterprises covering agriculture, manufacturing, laboratory diagnostics, language services and other areas, with the institution increasingly targeting markets beyond Zimbabwe.
Its agro-business operations include citrus, horticulture, poultry, beef cattle, piggery, goat production and livestock improvement. More significantly, some of the university’s agricultural output is now being produced for export markets, marking a significant shift from the traditional role of university farms as teaching and demonstration facilities.
MSU is already exporting sugar snap peas, targeting markets in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, while rock melons are being positioned for markets in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Mr Matarutse said the move into international markets represented an important stage in the university’s commercialisation journey.
“In the agro-business we do grow citrus, we have got horticulture, both local and export horticulture, we have got poultry, we have beef cattle, piggery and goat production and livestock improvement. In other words, we are exporting two lines of horticulture, we are exporting peas, that is the sugar snails, and we are also into the export of rock melon,” he said.
The export drive gives practical meaning to the Education 5.0 philosophy, which calls for universities to move beyond producing graduates and research outputs towards innovation, industrialisation and the creation of goods and services.
At MSU, that philosophy is being applied across several business lines. The university’s enterprises include clothing and textiles, where it produces gowns, protective clothing and other garments, as well as food and beverages, chemicals and printing.
The university has also established a pathology and diagnostic centre that is attracting interest from major public and private hospitals because of its advanced diagnostic equipment. Its language institute is similarly developing services and products from the university’s linguistic expertise.
The transformation is being driven by a broader institutional vision in which commercial activity is expected to generate income while strengthening the university’s contribution to national development.
For Me Matarutse, however, the university’s role does not stop at generating income. Its commercial activities are also being aligned with the Government’s rural industrialisation and employment objectives.
“The government’s vision on the 2030 Agenda looks for rural industrialisation and the creation of employment in the rural areas and product manufacturing in the rural areas, final products. So, as MSU, we are also involved in community engagements,” he said.
One example is the university’s work in the Holy Cross area, where it is providing technical support to a community farming project covering about 120 hectares. The project produces crops including wheat, sugar beans and maize, while the university has also supported the development of lodges intended to stimulate local economic activity and employment.
At Pitscottie Farm in Kwelwe, MSU is pursuing an even broader rural development model following the construction of a major dam. The infrastructure is expected to support aquaculture, wildlife management, agro-ecotourism, crop production and pasture improvement, said Mr Matarutse.
The objective is to create a productive ecosystem capable of generating multiple economic activities and employment opportunities for surrounding communities.
Mr Matarutse said the university’s vision was continuing to expand beyond primary production into value addition, including plans for milling and the production of livestock feed that could eventually serve both MSU’s own operations and neighbouring communities.
“We’ve essentially set-aside the commercial unit that is able to pay its own employees and also generate income for the university. The agro-industrial park is generating money for the university and able to recruit and pay its employees separate from the main university,” he said.
Such a commercial structure is central to the sustainability of MSU’s model. Rather than relying entirely on university funding, the enterprises are expected to generate their own revenues and contribute to the institution’s financial base, said Mr Matarutse.
However, he noted that expansion into large-scale production and exports requires significant capital, and MSU is increasingly looking towards partnerships and joint ventures to finance its growth.
Mr Matarutse said smaller projects could be financed through enterprise profits and university support, while larger investments would require external partnerships. The university is already preparing to enter a joint venture with a bank, while other financial institutions have expressed interest in financing its projects.
“They are seeing the value,” Mr Matarutse said of the growing interest from financial institutions.
That interest is potentially significant because it points to a changing perception of the university’s commercial activities, he added, noting that what may once have been regarded as ancillary projects within an academic institution are increasingly being viewed as viable businesses capable of attracting investment.
MSU’s experience provides a strong case for Zimbabwe to position its universities as active participants in the productive economy. Universities already possess land, infrastructure, laboratories, technical expertise, researchers and a large pool of students — resources that can be harnessed not only to produce knowledge, but also to produce goods and services.
A such, Mr Matarutse said the MSU model demonstrates how transformation can move progressively from production to commercialisation and ultimately to exports.
He said their horticultural exports to Europe and the Middle East show that university enterprises can compete for international markets, while its manufacturing and service businesses demonstrate the potential for higher education institutions to diversify their sources of revenue.
For Zimbabwe, the wider opportunity is to replicate such models across the higher education sector, with universities developing enterprises aligned to their areas of expertise and national industrial priorities.
Government has said that the ultimate measure of Education 5.0, therefore, may increasingly be found not only in the number of graduates a university produces, but in the businesses it creates, the products it manufactures, the communities it transforms, the jobs it generates and the foreign currency it earns.
