Tonderai Rutsito
Zimbabwe hosts a very proud record of being the most literate nation in Africa and this showed at the recent Research and Intellectual Expo. While not all inventions were not up to scratch, there was evidence that we have some very talented individuals amongst us.
Government on its part has done a lot to ensure that Zimbabweans continue to be educated setting aside 30 percent of the national budget for education which is a very huge chunk of the budget.

Zimbabweans enjoy and take pride in this record but what have we done with it we need to do more to show the World what we are made of and our capabilities.

It’s high time we convert our high literate levels to practical success in technology. Most of the inventions that I saw at the Research and Intellectual Expo have the capacity to solve some of the major problems in the country if properly supported.

What rather boggles my mind, why we have failed to translate all these developments into real industrial opportunities?

With all these projects, efforts and innovations, we ought not to be worrying about unemployment as most of these solutions are employment creation opportunities for the present and future generations. Education and literacy becomes a nullity when we can’t translate it into meaningful inventions.

Why are countries such as Kenya, South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria leading Africa in terms of technological development while they seriously lag behind Zimbabwe in terms of education and literacy.

Is our education system only teaching us to read and write figures and letters while it has failed to teach us to create opportunities for ourselves?

I strongly believe that Zimbabweans are much more innovative than the top four leading innovating countries mentioned above.

The reason that have been advanced for the current status quo has been lack of finance but even if we get the money I believe we will not be able to achieve very high standards of innovation.

We need to get our act together. Today Kenya has become the ICT hub of Africa because they have invested in training and nurturing their local talent via the establishment of a plethora of technology hubs and incubators.

The Kenyan government has fortunately received tremendous donor support to construct technology incubators and many Non-Governmental Organisations have invested in training and nurturing the talent, slowly but surely they have created solutions that have greatly contributed to their national GDP.

Nairobi is currently the hotspot in the region with 16 technology hubs and still counting, innovation hubs, tech centres, accelerators and incubators
This is mainly because it is being flooded with venture capital and business angels looking for start-ups to invest in. Even Google’s executive chairman Mr Eric Schmidt recently visited Nairobi and dubbed Kenya the continent’s technology leader with the launch of the $10 billion Konza Technology City just outside Nairobi is further evidence of the city’s promising future.

Of great interest is the place they coined the “iHub”, this is the co-working space for the tech community and business incubator which provides a space for entrepreneurs to receive mentorship and possible venture capital funding. More importantly, it also hosts the fastest Internet connectivity speed in the country.

The iHub is also home to the successful Ushahidi, a crowdmapping tool, a simple but effective tool that allows information to be crowdsourced via mobile phones and the Internet and it makes mapping that information easy. This was used to map reports of the 2008 electoral violence
In Zimbabwe we saw two private technology hubs coming up that is Hypercube Hub a project spearheaded by The Indigo Trust which worked closely with Hivos and the US Embassy in Zimbabwe and Muzinda Hub a project supported by Mrs Tsitsi Masiyiwa, wife to Econet wireless founder Mr Strive Masiyiwa.

Government needs to support these initiatives. There is need to create hubs and incubators to train and equip young Zimbabweans for sustainable technological developments.

Zimbabweans are way too gifted and smarter, should the playing field be level. We have the potential to become the home of technology in Africa.

  • The writer is the editor for TechnoMag, Zimbabwe`s Premier Technology Magazine, more indepth from www.technom.ag/7T or join us on our facebook page www.facebook.com/technomagzw Email articles[at]technomag.co.zw tweet @TechnoMagZw

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