MUTARE- The Ministry of Higher and Tertiary education is developing a strategic plan that will mainstream innovation to address socio economic problems in Zimbabwe, a top government official has said.
Minister of higher education Professor Amon Murwira said the need to bridge technology gaps by empowering education systems was deliberate to promote innovation in science and technology in education.
He made these remarks while addressing a ministry strategic planning workshop where he called for the development of a strategic plan that focuses on bridging technological dependency gap through inclusive deliberate cluster and innovation hubs.
Some of the areas that the strategic plan, spearheaded by the Zimbabwe Center for High Performance include areas of Artificial intelligence, algorithm development, engineering and use of computer systems as the country enters the fourth industrial revolution.
Murwira said this strategic direction needed academics and institutions to take bold and transformative measures for posterity planning to restore dignity and counter dependency.
“In terms of innovation drive at the innovation hubs or pipeline which come into the hubs the main one will of course be faculty, the second will be citizens that are outside the education they can be housed at these hubs. ‘
“The third of course will be industry that may want an improvement on certain things so we will have three pipeline that will support the incubation hubs,” said Murwira.
On the funding of education and incubation, Murwira said the strategy will include a domestic resource mobilization to support education movement and raise internal funds through private public partnerships.
He also said at the domestic level government has been increasing support to the education sector through direct funding and a business investment models adopted during the Covid19 era.
“The funding of for innovation has been improving in the second republic, money is never enough it’s important to utilize money in targeted ways to ensure high returns.
“The times of having research financed from outside and foreign funds should be a thing of the past. We will now have to fund our own research and do what we have to do to innovate solutions to our local context.
“We should now have Zimbabwe develop its technology based on its heritage leveraging on competitive advantages and local endowments. The sector will generate billions, and very soon we will be making stunning announcements of these innovations,” he said.
