The Sunday Mail
Levi Mukarati and Harmony Agere
Zimbabwe faces a number of challenges and its citizens agree that local solutions are the answer. Industry is not performing while the agriculture sector remains underfunded and pinned down by unfavourable weather conditions.
Information shows that the country is importing the bulk of products that are needed daily.
As such, calls for enterprising minds have grown louder to drive the economy.
Academic institutions are being re-directed to produce employers or innovative minds.
This is upon realisation that developed countries are enjoying huge financial returns because of an abundance of inventions at both academic and industrial levels.
The inventions trigger high development and have been lucky to find an environment where businesses take them up before being commercialised.
Industries in these countries drive markets to adopt new inventions as seen with cell phones, micro-processors, social media, and household appliances.
Unfortunately, this is not so in many developing countries where billions of people survive on the low-end and invention is a necessity.
In most cases, poverty has resulted in deaths in the third world, which can be avoided by adopting the output from science and technology.
But for countries like Zimbabwe, it seems industry and the general populace are failing to take advantage of inventive opportunities.
A decent number of students in the country’s tertiary institutions have turned ideas into tangible products but these have remained unutilised.
And sadly, local brains are being recognised elsewhere, risking the country losing its ideas.
Recently, a Harare Institute of Technology (HIT) student Kudzai Chasinda was invited to attend the Google Developer Community Summit in the United States, San Francisco.
This was after he developed a music platform called Chase Music Player.
The music application is downloadable on Google Play for free and is designed to offer free music to android devices running on Android 4.0 or higher.
Many students at HIT have developed unique designs for industrial food processing, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and engineering.
The institute’s communications director Mr Tinashe Mutema says while a few companies have come on board to commercialise the ideas, most of them have not been industrialised.
“We are one of the leading local institutions in industrial designs and engineering innovations but the problem is that most of our ideas have not reached the commercial stage due to lack of support,” he said.
“The students have been making some of the most useful innovations but local companies have shown little interest.
“In some cases, our ideas have been taken and commercialised without our knowledge and approval.
“There is little we can do because we do not yet have intellectual rights to some of the research.”
Mr Mutema said the institution needs funding to ensure the inventions are marketed for the benefit of the country.
“At the moment, we are looking to sell what we have developed to companies outside the country.
“We are receiving a lot of interest from some South African companies and if foreign companies are showing interest, why not the local ones?”
HIT’s success in innovations has been enabled by the institution’s commercial company called Insti-Tech Holdings which has five subsidiaries – Instifoods, Institools, Instisoft, Institronics and Instiherbs.
Under this vehicle, the institute’s students have excelled and won international accolades.
One student, Clive Nyapokoto, scooped this year’s award of the Energy Globe National Award for developing a machine aimed at improving organic agriculture – the Vermicompost or Vermi-Aquaponics (VA) System.
According to the design specifications, the VA System is a smart integrated organic agricultural system which integrates Aquaponics, Vermiculture, small livestock and ICT technologies in a controlled looping environment.
It is a smart soilless farming system which can be modelled to suit any climatic region for food production and can be done as vertical indoor or outdoor farming.
Sensors are used to remotely monitor and control the system and sensed data can be visualised on different web platforms.
Also from HIT, Auxilliah Chiwanga scooped an award for developing a machine to produce virgin paper from sugarcane residue.
The above innovations can go a long way in boosting entrepreneurship in the country while providing industry with solutions in satisfying local markets.
In countries like Japan and China, university-industry linkages have greatly boosted entrepreneurship and ultimately the economies.
However, HIT is not the only institution that is longing for support from industry.
University of Zimbabwe, Chinhoyi University of Science and Technology and National University of Science and Technology have all come up with bright designs in the past.
But just like HIT, they enjoy limited support from industry.
To this end, Government has set up a committee to promote local university designs while also protecting the intellectual property.
Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education (ZIMCHE) spokesperson Mr Jonathan Gandari said there are plans to set a proper policy on inventions in academic institutions.
“We do not have a clear policy on inventions by academia, that is why three weeks ago ZIMCHE brought industry and university leaders to discuss this issue,” he said.
“A technical committee was set up to work on a clear policy.
“The workshop was called University – Industry linkages and the idea was to map out how to industrialise innovation from institutions of higher education.”
Higher and Tertiary Education deputy minister Godfrey Gandawa also confirmed that a policy is being developed to protect research and other intellectual property.
“We do not have a clear plan yet, but we are working on an intellectual property policy which will protect their researches,” he said.
“Some of them have been coming up with good research but there is a risk that they could lose it to industry so the policy will address that.
“We are also encouraging industry to fund various innovations from universities,” said the deputy minister.
Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries vice-president Sifelani Jabangwe said industry has always needed output from universities but there were no proper mechanisms to promote such a relationship.
“There should be technology transfer between colleges and industry but it’s a process and that is what has been lacking,” he said.
“Every year, students come up with good ideas but they never get to see the light of the day because sometimes those ideas are not available to the industry.
“In some cases, industry does really have problems but the students are not always informed on what solutions to come up with.
“But I’m glad that a national committee to deal with all of that has now been put together and it will look into these issues.”
Zimbabwe is sitting on a minefield of inventions and these can only cause a positive impact to the country if embraced at all levels.
