The Sunday News
Judith Phiri Business Reporter
THE Government has called for strong linkages between academia and industry that will inform policies to feed into the development of the Zimbabwe National Industrial Development Policy (ZNIDP) for the facilitation of industrialisation that responds to national needs.
Speaking at a consultative meeting on the new ZNIDP in Harare, the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation Science and Technology Development, Professor Amon Murwira said it was important to close the gap between academia and industry so that there is cultivation of policies that encourage cutting edge science and technology systems. “Human needs inform science and technology development to cause industrialisation to satisfy human needs and cause exports. In order to develop a good industrial policy, our task is to develop linkages between Government, academia/science institutions and industry. As a nation, we must be able to make what we need. Who is it who makes what you need is the big question. If you have a breakdown at your factory, whom do you call? This tells us who is running your country. If you tell us that you have to make a call to another country, then we have a big problem. This is an indication that there is a weak link between the country’s education system and the country’s industry.”
He said the nation had a vision of becoming an upper middle-income economy by 2030 as expressed by President Mnangagwa and the ZNIDP was a deliberate decision taken by an independent people to develop their own country through industrialisation. Prof Murwira said as the policy was being crafted there was a need to take into account that it addresses both thematic/value chains and spatial, following geographical spread, for example rural industrialisation.
“Additionally, as we develop our ZNIDP as Zimbabwe, it is important to characterise our standing, whether we are a buying nation or an industrialising nation. Alternatively, are we shoppers or doers/manufacturers? It is equally important that we characterise the origins of our industry before we craft our ZNIDP. Do we have the capabilities to produce the industry we want? Design thinking is, therefore, important as we industrialise and modernise our nation,” he added.
The Minister said it was vital for people to realise that industrialisation was a product of innovation and that innovation was either exogenous or endogenous to a nation. He said human needs dictate the type of innovation needed to produce an industry that satisfies human needs.
“We must therefore, first understand the need that will be satisfied by any innovation before we go to full scale industrialisation otherwise we run the risk of developing industries that have solely foreign origins, which is not sustainable, this is the highest state of vulnerability. We therefore, also have to characterise the nature of our industry pipelines in terms of which one between the endogenous and exogenous innovation is dominating the economy. Our desire is for the endogenous industry pipeline to have a relatively bigger pipeline than the exogenous industry pipeline. It is through the triple helix model which comprises of Government, academia/science institutions and industry, that we could achieve this and all this must be based on our heritage.”
Prof Murwira said they were putting in place a grand plan for industrialising and modernising the nation, in which innovation science and technology system must be the provider and facilitator of wealth creation through dominating the technology trajectory via endogenous innovation that lead to the production of quality goods and services.
