Organisers of the Computer Aided Designing (CAD) competition that features High school students are working on creating a platform where students can market their designs as part of efforts to encourage them to start their own enterprises.
Nathan Guma / Bridget Mabanda.
Advanced Design Colleges (ADC) director David Ngandu told delegates who attended the second edition of CAD competition at Eaglesvale High School recently.
Students have been developing brilliant design projects but had no way of marketing them to potential partners for implementation.
The competition fosters innovation through challenging students to design projects that solve problems bedeviling the country such as water, energy and unemployment.
Ngandu said the platform will help showcase students’ designs to the international community as a strategy to attract potential investors.
“Next year (2020), we will invite the corporate world and business people from Africa to the designing competition,” he said.
He added; “This will enable students to meet potential sponsors of their projects who can then help in the implementation and commercialization.”
This year’s CAD competition winners were Eaglesvale High School and Christian Brothers College who finished with an equal number of points. Eaglesvale designed a water purification system that simultaneously produce clean water and electricity. Gateway were the CAD quiz competition champions.
The process, allows water to be heated at high temperature with the steam directed to turbines through high pressure. The turbines will generate electricity while the steam is condensed to produce clean water.
Eaglesvale CAD patron Isaac Machera said there is a need for a platform that markets student’s projects before adding that schools should also invest in marketing students’ projects.
“I am going to invite reputable engineers to come and analyse the project so that we can develop it further,” Machera said.
Eaglesvale team captain, David Chachezvi had this to say; “our project is relevant to Zimbabwe as it produces electricity through recycling water thus it can save the government money used to import energy and buy water purification chemicals.”
It is against this background that ADC has decided to rope in the corporate world to provide sponsorship.
Such innovations speak to the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education 5.0 philosophy, which emphasizes innovation and industrialisation.
Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education Amon Murwira revealed that government was planning to turn all these ideas into goods and services that will save the country’s fortunes through the establishment of industrial parks in the country’s 10 provinces to spearhead and help in the implementation of such brilliant ideas.
