Zimpapers Logo

Ivan Zhakata Herald Correspondent
THE Government has urged vocational training centres and incubation hubs to enhance rural industrialisation, saying this was central to economic development.

Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development Minister Professor Amon Murwira said this yesterday during a tour of the India-Africa Vocational Training and Incubation Centre in Harare.

He said vocational training centres should look at enhancing rural industrialisation because it was the rural areas that had to be developed.

“Our main aim is modernisation and industrialisation, which is our aim of Heritage-Based Education 5.0 and it is from idea to product,” he said.

“This is the product part where we are fabricating products, which is the second final part of innovation and industrialisation. Then what we are saying is that all our institutions should be looking at enhancing rural industrialisation because it is the rural areas that we have to develop.

“We are not interested in bringing people to town. We are interested in improving people’s lives while they are where they are. So, because of this, all these institutions will base their operations in terms of their products and launches in the rural areas.”

Prof Murwira said they were in the process of configuring vocational training centre systems so that they are in line with the rest of the education system.

“We have committed ourselves as a ministry to build industrial parks; so this is part of a very smooth process, but the main aim is to modernise and industrialise this country and our target area is the rural areas,” he said.

“We are making sense of the whole thing, and we are reconfiguring because the whole of last week we were meeting all departments, and this is part of the process, but the most important thing is that what His Excellency the President (Cde Mnangagwa) has done is to bring these centres; what I can call a complementary ecosystem.”

In February last year, President Mnangagwa launched the India-Africa Incubation Centre in Harare, which he described as a key conduit that will drive the modernisation and industrialisation of the economy.

The centre specialises in equipping young people with entrepreneurial skills to start their own businesses.
It is equipped with 25 different technologies in food processing, engineering, brick-making and paper processing.
The centre has capacity to accommodate 50 trainees every intake.