SETA Youth Association founder, engineer Lovemore Mukono says Zimbabwe has the potential to develop into a high tech country like Japan if it puts the high literacy rate into practice which will in turn be used to produce goods of value.
Speaking on ZBC’s new and current affairs program, Good Morning Zimbabwe, Mukono said Zimbabwe’s high literacy rate means nothing as it is not being exploited to good use.
“With the high literacy rate of Zimbabwe currently, the country can be the Japan of Africa because we can turn all these skills in literacy information to skills in productivity and value creation.
“Every Zimbabwean needs to stop learning to debate and speak good English but to produce things of value. This is what STEM and the Psychomotor policies are seeking to address. Practical skills come in many forms.
“This is why you find that when you build or extend Kariba Power Station, you see we have to go foreign to look for people and spend billions of dollars paying them to build these power stations for us, which energy we use simply for lighting whereas we should be using that energy to be productive.
“So the skills required will include financial literacy and economic literacy because we need to know where the country is going and what needs to be done for us to get there,” said Mukono.
Zimbabwe has, since the turn of the millennium, lost skilled human capital as most skilled persons left the country in search of greener pastures.
The country has had to rely heavily on imported labor, commodities and services as most industries which used to manufacture such have closed shop.
However, the President Emmerson Mnangagwa government has promised to turn around the economy by engaging with countries formerly referred to as detractors.
