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Brian Mudumi and Takudzwanashe Mundenga
The new global benchmark is a clear indication that employers are actively searching for graduates with international experience and competences.

This evidence affirms the increasing investment being made in the activity by individuals, institutions, governments and industries. The Global EmployerSurvey of 2011 embraced the nitty-gritties of brain circulation as a regional and global philosophy.

The historiography of the development of China and the South East Asian Tigers’ galloping economies leaves some economic friends like Zimbabwe with an opportunity to learn a lot.

In their development stories China, India, Malaysia, Philippines and South Korea are well-known for sending their youths, students and graduates all over the world through government assisted programmes and scholarships with which they have built a wider international flair, which makes it easy for these countries to invest anywhere in the world.

The benefits of students who advance their educational credentials in other countries are diverse. Apart from gaining career-related experience is their experiencing of cross-cultural exposure and increasing cross-cultural understanding.

This empowers them to enhance their soft skills such as adaptability, flexibility, ability to handle change and these are the soft skills that employers are seeking today.

Having suffered the deleterious effects of economic meltdown of 2007-2008 that saw skyrocketing inflation, liquidation of companies and a downslide of various sectors of the economy due to the litigation of unwarranted sanctions; our aptitude to create employment for the swelling number of graduates became a bit challenging.

In most cases, these college graduates started their own initiatives to support their families.

Such income generating projects (IGPs) are regarded by some economists as some form of employment; specifically known as disguised employment.

We assume this is what probably prompted the latest Zimbabwe National Statistical Agency (ZIMSTAT) report that the country’s unemployment rate stands at 11 percent which is not bad.

Since the second half of the new millennium, globalisation dealt us a manpower haemorrhage which perceived Zimbabwe as a net exporter of skilled labour to neighbouring countries as well as the distant climes.

Zimbabwe has been on the receiving end of brain drain due to unrecognised and unaccounted for benefits of brain circulation in the form of return flows of income, investment and knowledge from the diaspora.

Nonetheless, the solution to the puzzle just came in as the Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Ministry reported a few days ago that a database of graduates has been created for possible job placements both abroad and locally when opportunities arise.

Therefore, the Government is inviting all those who graduated from tertiary colleges since 1980 to forward their names for possible employment in several African countries with which it has signed agreements for labour exportation.

This is an advantage to our economy, especially after speculation that the head count conducted on Government employees by the Civil Service Commission was a feat to downsize the civil service.

The negative implication was on prospective workers who are yet to find jobs, hearing that the government, which is the major employer at the moment, is retrenching.

This then literally dispels the panic since our citizens can access vacancies that are not available on the Zimbabwean labour market, but accessible elsewhere with the help and support of the Government.

Zimbabwe has more than enough qualified teachers and the Memorandum of Understanding that Harare has already signed with countries like South Sudan, Botswana, Angola and Namibia will go a long way in exploring new opportunities.

This is more than welcome, particularly when it has emerged that countries like South Sudan and Namibia are in dire need of professionals like teachers, engineers, pharmacists and administrators from Zimbabwe.

Brian Mudumi and Takudzwanashe Mundenga are members of the Zimbabwe China Youth Forum