The Sunday Mail
The Harare Institute of Technology (HIT) has in recent times grabbed headlines for its tangible research and innovation output in science, engineering and technology. The institution has discharged its mandate to develop and commercialise technologies for Zimbabwe’s rapid industrialisation in a stunning manner.
It has been at the frontier of knowledge production with inventions ranging from virtual technologies, electronic commerce, smart energy management, smart agriculture and transport management systems among others. In 2014, HIT broke new grounds to become the first university in Zimbabwe to patent research outputs. Our Reporter, Harmony Agere, spoke to the man driving HIT, Vice-Chancellor, Engineer Quinton Kanhukamwe, and got his insights on the vision of the institution.
Q: Can you give us a brief profile of the institution?
A: The institution was established in 2005 through an Act of Parliament, the HIT Act, Chapter (25:26). Prior to its establishment as a university, the institution operated as a vocational training centre and technical college from 1988. At its inception, we were given a specific mandate to develop, incubate, transfer and commercialise technology for Zimbabwe’s rapid industrialisation. The journey has been exciting and productive, but not without its challenges. Our first task was thus to ensure that we developed programmes which would speak to this mandate. We now have five established schools — Engineering and Technology, Allied Health Sciences, Industrial Sciences and Technology, Information Science and Technology as well as the Business and Management Sciences.
Programmes within these schools were infused with two concepts, innovation and the ethos of technopreneurship which were the bedrock of our existence as an institution. Cognisant of the desire to infuse technopreneurship, design and innovation competencies in graduates, all programmes have mandatory technopreneurship and design and innovation courses.
The university also purposefully recruited and re-trained staff who had the competencies to deliver on this mandate. Over the years, we have developed strategies which aid us in the execution of this mandate and currently, we are guided by the Strategic Plan document, Vision 2020 — Designing the Future. Crucial in this strategy are issues of strengthening our role in national development through the training of requisite human intellectual capital who will drive the country’s industrialisation agenda, staff development of our human resource base who are key in the development of this capital, the infrastructural development of our institute and the acquisition of state-of-the-art and modern equipment and facilities to contribute to teaching and learning spaces. The development of Hi-tech Development Valley, which will be the hub of innovation and enquiry, incubation of potent ideas — their transfer and commercialisation. These have been some of our guiding principles throughout the journey.
We have been putting up modern infrastructure, equipping our university with state-of-the-art equipment which is commensurate with the programmes that we teach, as you will be aware science, engineering and technology are expensive to run, and we have, throughout the years, received support from Government to acquire equipment and upgrade facilities to reinforce our teaching, research, innovation and commercialisation agenda.
Q: You pride yourselves as innovation and technopreneurial university, can you elaborate on this?
A: Indeed, as expressed by our motto: success through innovation, we continue to reinforce this by other monikers such as “innovation is our DNA”, to describe our deep commitment to the precepts of innovation. We firmly believe that the ideological foundations of innovation are the ones which power inventions, through independent thought and enquiry, which goes on to transform economies and usher national development. At the heart of all our programmes are the Technopreneurship and the Design and Innovation project development modules, thus offering our students the foundations of entrepreneurship as a cornerstone for wealth creation as well as the inculcation of a hands-on approach through design projects. This reinforces the desire in us to produce job and wealth creators with the stamina and courage to venture into hi-tech enterprises development as opposed to job-seekers.
We, at HIT, emphasise research because it naturally complements our primary teaching function. We believe effective teaching can only be achieved through research informed teaching.
Our desire is to offer our academics and students a large pool of research resources, first-rate facilities and generous funding to create an ideal environment in which they explore, discover and create.
This also inspires student-lecturer mentorship and a new generation of researchers, as students actively participate in the funded projects. HIT encourages students at all levels to participate in fundamental and applied research.
HIT also believes that research is more than an isolated intellectual exercise. It is about finding practical solutions to real-world problems, empowering the economy with new technology and collaborating across disciplines on new areas of knowledge. The future of our industry, particularly as we seek to move up the value chain must be principally centred on the availability of expertise and the flexibility and creativity of the workforce.
Q: What makes HIT stand out from its peers?
A: Driven by our President, who has given us his Vice Chancellor’s charge of promoting the Industry 4.0 adoption across industries as well as our parent Ministry’s Education 5.0 doctrine, we have developed an arsenal of strategies to deliver on our mandate conscious of the fact that we are not competing with any university as our role is to play a complementary role to other universities. More so, we operate on the pedestal of our Ten Point plan which is a derivative of the institutional Strategic Plan, Designing the Future Vision 2020 which acts as a compass and radar for the university.
The plan is a clear encapsulation of the university’s mandate as enshrined in the HIT Act and reflects the strategic thrusts of the Strategic Plan, Designing the Future Vision 2020, which seamlessly weaves into our mandate.
The uniqueness of our programmes, which we have always sought to and continue to be futuristic in so far as bridging the current and future technological trends continue to position and make our brand to stand out. We desire to be at the forefront of emerging technological innovations through the continuous interrogation, review and updating of our curriculum so that we continue to be relevant now and in the future. Our stakeholders are the jury on the performance of that brand.
Q: What other achievements can you highlight?
A: I am sure you are aware that we established the Technology Transfer, Licensing, and Commercialisation Centre charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the university’s Intellectual Property outputs create wealth for us.
As a result, there has been accelerated establishment of start-ups and setting up of companies that produce goods and services. For example, we recently developed the ERP system for ZUPCO and local authorities, as well as transformers.
HIT was among the first universities to have an institutional IP policy and a centre for Environment and Climate Change research.
Q: Can you further enlighten us on the Zupco and LADS systems?
A: HIT developed a Digital Urban Transport Management System with an integrated tap-and-go payment module within it to address challenges associated with public transport management.
The system has the following features: tap-and-go payment system, fuel issuing system, fuel consumption monitoring system, bus tracking, automated route allocation as well as intelligent real-time financial reporting.
This system has the advantages of reducing pilferage on revenue generated, increases reliability on the part of Zupco, promotes the use of plastic money as well as modernising our public transport system — one of the pillars of Vision 2030. Further, this is a local solution which means it helps in curtailing the use of foreign currency which is required if a foreign company was to be used to deploy the system. You will recall that His Excellency, the President who is the HIT Chancellor, Cde Emmerson Mnangagwa has challenged us to extend this system to CMED.
On the other hand, the Local Authorities Database System (LADS) is being deployed in rural local authorities and integrates all aspects of councils administration. Councils like Zvimba, Mvurwi, Bikita and Mutasa have embraced it and are realising increased revenue collection and the benefits of reduced human interference with systems.
Over the years, research and development in higher institutions have dropped drastically due to brain drain and a lack of the political will by Governments to increase the budgetary appropriation for education, how can this decline be addressed?
Indeed, whereas the problem of dwindling funding support for higher education research and development is global, it has been more prevalent in Africa. Inadequate resources deplete the capacity of experts on the ground to do research. This is further compounded by the problem of brain drain. Across the African continent the scarce resources that are channelled or invested to train high-end professionals like engineers and medical personnel end up in disarray as some of them do not return to their countries. However, there is a greater need to continuously invest in high-end skills training in order to achieve the requisite critical mass. This should be accompanied by appropriate incentives to enable the retention of these skills.
Q: How can Zimbabwe benefit from its high adult literacy rate which, at over 90 percent, is slightly behind Japan — one of the world’s most innovative countries?
A: Our high literacy rates are a result of conscientious efforts by our Government to redress the social inequalities which were apparent in the newly independent Zimbabwe in 1980, after almost a century of colonial rule.
The progressive and proactive policies in education over a sustained period of time have given a rise in literacy rates.
However, this created a gap in which our education was anchored on addressing literacy instead of driving economic and industrial growth.
We are happy the coming in of the New Dispensation witnessed a seismic shift on our higher education terrain as universities were called to lead in the country’s industrialisation and modernisation agenda.
It is easier to re-orient educated people to start prioritising producing goods and services from academic outputs and because the nation is so literate it becomes advantageous for our nation.
