Zimpapers Logo

Minister Dokora

Abigail Mawonde Herald Correspondent
Zimbabwe’s education system is a role model, which African countries must emulate, Malawian ambassador to Zimbabwe Ms Annie Kumwenda has said.

Ms Kumwenda made the remarks after paying a courtesy call on Primary and Secondary Education Minister Dr Lazarus Dokora on Wednesday at his offices in Harare, where they exchanged notes on education.

“Our discussions focused on areas of collaboration, especially looking at improving the education quality,” she said. “We look at Zimbabwe as the role model for Africa, especially looking at the education system. It is not just the system, but the outcome or the results, which the education system is able to produce.

“We feel we can learn a lot from Zimbabwe through exchange programmes, not just for the teachers, but also even the learners themselves.”

Ms Kumwenda said Malawi was monitoring Zimbabwe’s new education curriculum with interest.

“We have also discussed on how we can prepare the students to become employers, unlike previously when they were prepared to be employees,” she said.

“Looking at the unemployment rate prevailing in almost all the countries, I think the most important thing now is just to prepare and invest more in vocational skills.”Ms Kumwenda said they were looking at revising a Memorandum of Understanding between Malawi and Zimbabwe to make it effective.

“We also talked of how we can protect children so that each and every child is given an opportunity to go through the education system,” she said.

“This is happening when the First Lady of Malawi is the president for First Ladies in Africa and she is passionate about child protection. “She is being very vigorous in raising resources to help the girl child and in some instances the boy child too. So, we are looking at this as also an opportunity for Zimbabwe to take advantage of this to profile the advocacy for child protection.”

Minister Dokora said Sadc countries were a family and always cooperated. “We, therefore, do not see the boundaries that are imposed on us by history as separating our people, who are largely one,” he said. “Therefore, we celebrate every opportunity that arises to further cement any of the collaborations that will be meaningful to both parties.

“Over and above the matters that Her Excellency has underscored, we have also said that our team will look into the draft agreement, the MOU, and rebuilt it in the context of the new curriculum, so that one of the possible destinations of some of the champion schools in our country could quite easily be in Malawi.”