Southern Africa dominates Youth Interactive Correspondent
STUDENTS from Zimbabwe and South Africa dominated the winners of the recent 8th African Organisation for Standardisation (ARSO) Essay Competition.
The first winner was a South African student, while Zimbabweans Shannel Bingepinge and Lincoln Majogo were second and third respectively.
The essay submissions were assessed at the national, regional and continental levels and the achievements of the Zimbabwean students were at all three levels. Bingepinge recently graduated from Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT), where she studied Fashion and Design, while Magojo is expected to graduate next month.
He studied Law at the University of Zimbabwe.
The theme of the 8th ARSO Essay Competition was “The Role of Standardisation in Promoting Arts, Culture and Heritage – The Creative Economy in Africa”.
The Nairobi-based ARSO, is an inter-governmental body established by the African Union (AU) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in 1977 with the principal mandate to harmonise African standards and conformity assessment procedures in order to reduce technical barriers, thus promoting intra-African and international trade, as well as enhance the industrialization of Africa.
While ARSO was established in pursuance of a recognition system for sustainability standards, the essay competition was first officially launched in 2013 with a focus on eradicating poverty through ensuring that Africa’s youth are enlightened, and engender a culture of quality. The annual ARSO Continental Standardisation Essay Competition aims to empowering the African youth to understand the role and importance, as well as the benefits of standardization in facilitating sustainable development in Africa.
The competition promotes quality standards for all goods and services produced on the continent, ensuring safety at all times.
To this end, each year, students at tertiary institutions and under the age of 35 are invited to participate.
ARSO argues that the new creative-digital ecosystem has created a sense of a “creative era” – the knitting together of information, media, creative content and the digital sphere is a movement that has allowed for the rapid globalisation of ideas and information. ARSO is of the view that growing in breath, economic share and innovation, the cultural creative industries have great potential to accelerate socio-economic change across Africa.
The cultural creative industries are today among the most dynamic sectors in the world economy, providing new opportunities for developing countries to leapfrog into emerging high growth areas of the world economy.
At its 74the General Assembly in 2019, the United Nations declared 2021 the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development, under which it prioritises ongoing need to support developing countries with economies in transition in diversifying production and exports, including new sustainable growth areas that include creative industries. The African Union has highlighted that one of the major challenges that Africa must first confront is that of production, and has called for serious attempts to help African producers to focus not only on quantity, but also on quality because those are the pillars on which Africa’s competitiveness in the world will be determined.
The awards ceremony took place at the Standards Association of Zimbabwe (SAZ) headquarters in Harare this week. ARSO is a sister organisation to SAZ.
SAZ director-general, Dr Eve Gadzikwa, who is a past president of ARSO and member of the International Standards Organisation, encouraged greater participation of young people, arguing that tomorrow’s destiny is in their hands.
She was encouraged that institutions such as the University of Zimbabwe have had previous competition winners since 2018.
The theme of the ARSO 7th Continental Essay Competition was, “The Role of Standardisation in resolving and addressing the socio-economic issues for the Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons and creating durable solution to forced displacement in Africa”.