He said people should abandon the long held perception that
everything produced in Western countries was superior.
President Mnangagwa said this while addressing Cabinet
Ministers, captains of industry, academics, students and senior Government
officials after touring the University of Zimbabwe innovation and industrial
hub on campus and its agro-industrial park at its farm near Mazowe.
“The majority mostly of my age, when we see a cake we think
it must be white produced, we think a cake is a product of the West, nay it is
not true. I have seen cakes produced at these hubs from mhunga, mapfunde and
zviyo, zvinonaka zvekuti heki. It is because we had education to appreciate
what is produced and not how it has been produced. So the harnessing of Science
and technology by our own young men and women innovators to come up with
quality local products with high dietary properties is applauded,” said
President Mnangagwa.
“We should reach a stage where at breakfast table from the
time you sit and the time you leave everything is Zimbabwean, at lunch, supper
and dinner everything must be Zimbabwean. Possibly the eaters will be
Zimbabwean.”
He commended the education model that the Second Republic
is pushing saying it inspires innovation.
“It focusses on the delivery of a higher and tertiary
education system that generates knowledge for the production of goods and
services through teaching research community outreach innovation and
industrialisation, and not any more about how long Nile river is, and not any
more the size of the moustache of Hitla. This thrust of the Higher Education
Sector is the right path that will see us transform into a modern
industrialised and more developed country by 2030,” he said.
President Mnangagwa implored Zimbabweans and tertiary
institutions to strive to develop and catch up in terms of development.
“As Zimbabwe we are behind, we need to leapfrog and catch
with the rest of developing countries,. To do so we cannot follow the same pace
at which other developing or developed countries have evolved. Ours must now be
a scientific and technological race. I urge all our people to increase the
consumption and utilisation of these new traditional cereal products which are
proudly Zimbabwean as what the First Lady is doing,” said President Mnangagwa.
He challenged Government Ministries, departments and
agencies to stop mourning about resources but should start to be innovative in
search of solutions to the country’s challenges in line with what is envisaged
by the economic blue-print National Development Strategy1.
“I urge the various Ministries, Departments and Agencies to
take a leaf from this sector and make deliberate decisions to think outside the
box, infact you must remove the box totally. The accelerated achievement of the
milestones articulated in the NDS1 must be everyone’s focus and pre-occupation.
The culture of mourning and excuses is not acceptable. This administration is
about action, solutions and results. To this there is no going back,” said
President Mnangagwa.
He said in June this year he will award a bus to an institution with the best and most innovations and possibly making a regular event in future.
“The competition between and among universities is very
health. By June I will be announcing a university that would have made more
innovations and I will give them a bus, in future we will have quarterly
competition.”
He commended UZ for actualisation of Education 5.0 saying
it was a demonstration of the determination of its leadership. Herald
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